Judging Freedom - [MUST WATCH]: Max Blumenthal: Zionists Attack Pro-Peace Americans.

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

[MUST WATCH]: Max Blumenthal: Zionists Attack Pro-Peace Americans.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Whatever your stage, businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash listen. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, April 30th, 2025. Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, it's a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. What is the government trying to do to our friend, the very courageous and fearless Medea Benjamin? friend, the very courageous and fearless Medea Benjamin. Well, Chuck Grassley just introduced a letter calling for the FBI to investigate Code Pink, accusing them of being a paid, accusing, demanding like a sort of Farah investigation, claiming that they are sponsored by the Communist Party of China. And I don't think this is related to China at all. I actually think it's about Palestine. And that if you look at what Medea is doing, for example, she's one of the few reporters and activists on Capitol Hill actually holding elected lawmakers who are

controlled by the Israel lobby, holding their feet to the fire for supporting the deliberate starvation now of two million people in the Gaza Strip. She's grilling them every day on Capitol Hill. Nancy Mace, the Ozempic-addled, unhinged congresswoman from South Carolina accused Medea of hating Jews yesterday. Medea Benjamin, who's Jewish, and Nancy Mace, who I doubt had a bat mitzvah. But this is about Palestine. Code Pink is on the front lines of this, and it's a way of just trying to harass them in this McCarthy-ite era. And from my understanding, it relates to a donor,

to Code Pink, who lives in Shanghai, but the New York Times tried to do a hit piece that failed to establish that he was the Chinese government. So I think Medea would be a great guest for your show though to address this, and this really is an escalation of the US government against the anti war movement. Well, as you know, she's been on the show, and I would welcome her back. And I love what she does. But I was startled when

you sent me a copy of Senator Grassley's letter. I sent a text to his office asking if I could have a private conversation with him and they haven't yet responded. But here he is. Well, he's not doing his due diligence. And what he's doing is un-American. It's guilty until proven innocent. That the FBI should just investigate any time there's a suspicion of something or someone

gets smeared in the media. And that's not what's supposed to happen in a democracy. There has to be some hard evidence there and there isn't. And it's kind of ironic that- What, is the FBI going to investigate AIPAC while they're at it? Exactly. I mean, in 1964, the Justice Department decided that the most gigantic foreign influence campaign in US history was to be unregistered.

And ever since then, AIPAC has just run rampant, carrying out foreign influence operations, including probably in Charles Grassley's own office, as well as the Gulf states, which are ponying up money for every think tank on K Street, you know, buying GOP lawmakers like former Republican Senator, Norm Coleman, he's the top lobbyist for Saudi Arabia, and Trump's going to Saudi Arabia on May 15th. And it's his his family company run by Eric Trump is already raking in business deals

from Saudi Arabia, from the Emirates, a new tower is going up in Dubai. I mean, and they're accusing Code Pink of being a foreign agent. It's kind of revealing. Here is Medea Benjamin confronting Nancy Mace. This is actually hilarious, the stuff that Congresswoman Mace

says. And then we have a troubling clip of Norm Coleman in a minute. But first, Chris, cut number 14. Hello, Congresswoman. What do you have to say today about the starvation of children in Gaza? There's self-hating Jews, right? Is that what you are? You hate Jews? I was asking... I Am a Jew You guys are domestic terrorists you support domestic terrorism also silly but on a more serious note Do you have concern about the starvation?

about the starvation in Gaza. I know you love Jews. We all love Jews. I don't know why you take this on. What about the children who are starving because Israel has not let in food for the last two months? What about the Jews that have been murdered by Hamas and civilians in Gaza? You guys are disgusting.

You're okay with the collective punishment of two million people. I support the Jews all around the world, even you. You're self-loathing Jewishness. I've heard of the self-loathing before. That's an old-fashioned line for Jews that are not Zionists, but self-loathing Jewishness. What is this lady talking about? Well, that's what Zionism has done, is it has created a dynamic where it doesn't matter how much you read the Torah or do mitzvot, which are good deeds according to the Torah. And that is sort of supposed to be the

essence of Judaism, which was once a pacifist religion before the advent of Zionism. Now Gentiles, whose connection with Judaism is basically taking massive amounts of donations from an Israel lobby front group like AIPAC and using it and then voting in support of the deliberate starvation of two million people in a concentration camp of two million people in a concentration camp where they're warehoused because they're not Jews. That makes them more Jewish than someone like Medea Benjamin who was born Jewish, raised Jewish. When I went to Germany on a speaking tour

about what I saw during the 2014 slaughter in Gaza by Israel, I was immediately greeted with headlines on Berliner Morgan Post and various Axel Springer-owned tabloids calling me a Jew-hater, an anti-Semite. And one of the key Israel lobbyists in Germany, his name was Volker Beck from the Green Party, started saying, I hate Jews, I'm a Jew Jew hater. This is a guy who's a Gentile. He's never had a bris or a bar mitzvah. So that's what Zionism does. Zionism is just all,

your Jewishness can only be established through your worship of the genocidal Moloch of the state of Israel. And Nancy Mace, by the way, I mean, she, she, aside from serving Israel, she also is making a, you know, advancing the agenda of anti-feminists who don't think women should serve in politics. I mean, this is a complete clown show. Every day there's another unhinged display by Nancy Mace. Going back to 2021, when spray paint appeared

all around her home with strangely modeled anarchist symbols that were facing away from the home and which matched closely her own handwriting. I mean, this is an unhinged figure. Here's Medea again, she's going after Ben Gavir. This is a lot of shouting. It's half in English, half in Hebrew. Some of it's actually rather comical. But maybe you can tell us what you think is going on here. Cut number 15.

You killed baby! You killed baby! You killed baby! You are a racist! You are a war criminal! You are a war criminal! You are a war criminal! You abuse hatred! You are a human behavior! You are a racist! You are a war criminal! And you're hurting others. You're hurting my religion. My religion as a Jew. You are creating the anti-Semitism. I never supported 9-11. Baby killer, extremist, racist, a criminal, a clubber, a genocide. Get out of our house. This is him being taunted in Hebrew.

This is silent. This is Biro. Well, he's being pursued here by Israeli expats who live in New York. And they're calling him a Nazi and a fascist, and he's trying to walk away from them. He's not as aggressive with them. No. Why is he saying to Medea, you supported 9-11? What kind of an argument is that?

What's the basis for that? Well, these are just like the ravings of a hysterical inbred settler who's just running around like feral in the US Capitol. Someone who has been personally involved in violent attacks on Palestinian merchants in occupied Hebron on camera. Someone who couldn't even serve in the Israeli army because an Israeli court accused him of, actually convicted him of supporting a terrorist organization, a terrorist organization that formed into the political party that he represents in Netanyahu's coalition. It was Kaach and now it is Otzma Yehudit, the Jewish power party.

In the Jerusalem court where Ben-Gavir was tried, the printer actually ran out of ink because his rap sheet was so long. These guys, he's not only involved in crimes, his job has been as a lawyer to defend terrorists like Haim Perlman, who randomly went on a stabbing spree of Palestinian civilians in the south Hebron hills. That's Ben-Gavir's job. He is an accolade of Meir Kahane, who was the first to introduce the call to fully ethnically cleanse Palestine. That's now so mainstream that Donald Trump is advancing it for Gaza. But what he was doing in the U.S. was twofold.

Number one, he was there to promote his starvation plan, his plan to bomb food depots and food distribution areas in the Gaza Strip, where I just got footage from a journalist in Gaza. People are entire families that get a bowl of rice every day to live off of and he wants to bomb those areas and fully ethnically cleanse Gaza. His confrere, fascist confrere in the Israeli coalition, Bezalel Smotryk, said that the war won't end until hundreds of thousands are forced out of Gaza. So it's not really about the hostages. Ben-Gurvir has been opposed to any hostage deal, prevented hostage deals,

prevented the war from ending. And the other, you know, agenda point for him in the U.S. is to polarize the U.S. public through his presence and provoke as much anti-Semitism as possible, which is why his speaking visits have been generally held inside synagogues because he attracts protesters. Naturally, he's someone who should be protested. He's even protested by Jewish Israelis in New York. They come to semi-hermetically, culturally hermetic areas of Brooklyn like Midwood,

which are mostly Orthodox Jewish, to protest and then they come out and attack the protesters violently and say, oh, they were just here to attack our synagogue. And then the Trump administration says, this is anti-Semitism. By the way, Ben Gavir was on his way in the US Capitol as he was shouting threats and imprecations at American citizens.

This rabid foreign lawmaker, one of the biggest Nazis in the world, was on his way to meet Brian Mast, who is the chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. And he'd already met with several Republicans at Mar-a-Lago. So they're giving a stamp of approval

to one of the most extreme figures ever allowed in the United States while they are deporting, seeking to deport Ivy League graduates simply because they protested this genocide that Ben Gavir has helped cause. Brian Mast is one of the more fanatic members of the Congress who fought for the IDF and who wears an IDF uniform on the floor of the House of Representatives. Am I talking about the same guy? Yeah, he lost parts of his legs in bomb disposal in Afghanistan. Then after October 7, instead of wearing a U.S. uniform if he wants to do, like, cosplay,

he wears an Israeli army uniform because he had volunteered for the Israeli military. This is a Gentile, by the way, he's not even Jewish. And he did this to get elected in a district in Florida around Vero Beach. So he's walking around the US Capitol in a foreign military uniform. Now he's hosting that foreign country's biggest fascist. You know, and Medea Benjamin is, a senator is calling and Medea Benjamin is a senator calling for Medea Benjamin to be arrested essentially by the FBI and accused of being a foreign agent.

The U.S. Capitol, it feels like Knesset West these days. Everything feels upside down. It's almost like it's under occupation. I wonder if they made the Ben-Gabir go through security or if they just bypassed it as the Israel, according to Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Israeli military's officials for years have bypassed security at the Pentagon. I mean, just imagine another foreign official who had been convicted in his or her home country of supporting terrorism, being allowed

into not just allowed into the United States, but to meet, get a meeting and a photo op with the chair of the House Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs Committee. It's, it just shows where the priorities are. It didn't really happen. The chair of that committee, My god, things are going from bad to worse. Speaking of that, here's former Senator Norm Coleman speaking at some sort of a fundraiser for Jewish causes, saying the Jews are the masters of the universe. All right. Watch this. Cut number three. The majority of Gen Z have an unfavorable impression of Israel. And my friends, I think the reason of that is that we're losing the digital war.

OK, they're getting the information from TikTok and whatever it is. And we're losing that war. When you think about it, the masters of the universe are Jews. You know, we've got Altman and we've got Zuckerberg. We've got Altman and AI, we've got Zuckerberg, we've got Sergey Brin, we've got the whole group across the board, Jan Combs, head of what's app. It's us, and we have to figure out a way to win the digital battle.

Amelia, we gotta get our digital sneakers on so that the truth can prevail over the lies. And when we do that, the future of Israel will be stronger because a majority of all Americans will support Israel. We'll make that happen. We have to make it happen. Thank you. So this added to the Jews are the masters of the universe.

Is this what underlies apartheid? Well, this is what anti-Semites believe, but Zionism is an anti-Semitic ideology that believes simultaneously that there is no real place in the world for Jews, Jews can't be normal, and also that they must dominate the world in order to secure or dominate global politics in order to secure the survival of the walled off Spartan apartheid state known as Israel which exists outside the human family while it commits genocide. And Norm Coleman is freaking out about the complete collapse of Israel's soft power that young people in the United States and across the West are disgusted with Israel. It represents the embodiment of

evil to an entire generation of young Americans that cheered at the Coachella music festival when the Irish band Necap threw up a banner reading F Israel Free Palestine. And Norm Coleman wants all of the so-called masters of the universe, the AI lords and tech kingpins from Mark Zuckerberg to Sergey Brin to Jan Combs who is a huge supporter of Israel and Netanyahu to just censor on behalf of their ethno-religious loyalty to the Zionist project and there's

just not enough censorship going on for him. And there never will be enough censorship because one way or another, as long as the apartheid project exists in historic Palestine, we're going to be waking up to images of shredded babies day after day after day. It just doesn't seem like it wants to cease fire. And that is what's driving the disgust among young people, progressive, just all decent people for the state of Israel. And there's really nothing they can do to change that

unless they engage in some radical change of policy that doesn't seem possible. I should mention, Norm Coleman, aside from being the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which is a major front for the Adelson family and the Israel lobby, and a major GOP fundraiser is the top lobbyist for Saudi Arabia in Washington. And he was the warmup act at that J&S summit for Benjamin Netanyahu who embarked on a kind of a victory lap a 45 minute stem winding

Adlib speech with no teleprompter just Glorifying in all the what he sees as the military victories and intelligence victories Israel's scored since October 7th and culminating with another call that stems from the anxiety coming out of Tel Aviv and the Israel lobby. They're anxious about Israel's lack of soft power. They're also anxious about Trump's negotiations with Iran and Trump's broader agenda on the world stage. And Netanyahu essentially suggested that he would subvert an Iran deal and not let any

deal come to pass between the US and Iran, which raises further questions about who's behind the Bandar Abbas port explosion in Iran which killed possibly a hundred and wounded hundreds on the day, the very day, on the very hour that the Trump administration engaged in direct negotiations in Oman with the Iranian foreign minister. Wow. I saw another version of the Norm Coleman head was a camera from another angle and nothing you know we're standing right behind him and smirking. Yeah, I wonder what he's like you're not supposed to say that but right right here's something else that nothing you know who probably doesn't want something to say we're hitting you with

a lot today. Hit one of his loudest defenders in the United States, Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz agreed to a debate with our buddy, Scott Ritter, was very, very civilized. I was supposed to debate him, but he took Ritter instead. Well, Ritter managed to cause this debate to be very cordial and respectful, even though they don't agree

on anything. But Dershowitz made a startling admission about nuclear weapons in the middle of the debate. Cut number 16. Although I supported two state solution, I have since 1967, I wrote my first article supporting a two state solution in 1970. I supported it in a debate with Noam Chomsky in the early 1970s. It's an ideal. A one-state solution is impossible because who gets the nuclear weapons if you have a one-state solution? Obviously the Jewish state of Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people, is not going to give its Arab population access to its weapons system that are the only guarantee of Israel's

survival. The only reason Israel survives at all today is because it has overwhelming military strength more than all the Arab armies combined. It was proved in 1948, and it was proved again on October 7th, a year ago. Israel must maintain its superior military force. What he's talking about, about superior military proven on October 7th, but he did acknowledge something that's taboo for all those folks, the fact

that the Israelis have a nuclear weapon. Which is why Iran is enriching uranium, which is why they have to, which is why many Iranians and the principalists can't believe Iran should have nuclear weapons, given that there's another power that has an unregulated nuclear program with over 250 warheads at the Demona reactor, unregulated by the IAEA, which is not just pointed at Iran, but also pointed at Europe, as Seymour Hersh revealed in his book, The Sampson Option. Israel will use nuclear blackmail to preserve its apartheidist structure against the West. That's what makes it so dangerous and uniquely destabilizing. And as Alan Dershowitz pointed out,

And as Alan Dershowitz pointed out, it cannot be allowed to be a one state democracy, one person, one vote with equal rights for all, because as he said, the Arabs, meaning Palestinians, cannot be given access to this death machine that Israel has amassed. And the West doesn't have the will to come in and say, let's look at what you've got and let's end it. Let's let's let's do a Libya style solution or the Libya style solution is for Iran because Iran insists on maintaining its own political system and defending it

with its military. So it's nice to see this candor from a veteran propagandist like Alan Dershowitz. And, you know, it's unfortunate on that same channel, 69X Minutes, which is run by an ally of Elon Musk, Mario Nafal, that Shmooley Boetia ducked out of the debate with me after I wasn't able to debate Dershowitz. able to debate Dershowitz. Just to change the subject, but because it's somewhat breaking news, General Kellogg recently told Fox News that Kiev has agreed to 22 concrete terms during talks in London over the weekend. I'm sure that whatever they were, they did not include Crimea or the oblasts or the removal of NATO, but this is what he's touting as we speak, Max. Hard for me to believe that Trump listens to this fellow. This is an old line neocon warrior who's not interested in peace at all.

warrior who's not interested in peace at all. Well, I haven't talked to everybody in Moscow, but I bet you nobody in Moscow cares what Keith Kellogg has to say at this point. And he's not in Trump's inner circle. And what really matters is your proximity to Trump in how this administration's policy is shaped on the world stage. I doubt he's watching TV with Trump in the White House, watching Fox News at night. He's tending to Kiev and nobody in Moscow really cares what Zelensky has to say because force trumps everything. And what Kellogg has been putting forward for the past several days is a 30-day ceasefire,

which is something Moscow would never agree to because it would allow Zelensky to rearm and remobilize his population to shore up the battalions that have been winnowed out on the front lines while Russia is pushing forward, while Russia is winning. JD Vance has put forward a much more realistic formula for ending this war, which is to just give up on the time last. Turn off the spigot. Here's General Kellogg just a few minutes ago on Fox.

About a London last week, where we sat down with the Ukrainian team, with the Europeans as well, we had 22 concrete terms that they've agreed to. What they want to at the very first and what they have is a very comprehensive and permanent ceasefire that leads to a peace treaty. Why me comprehensive sea, air, land infrastructure for at least 30 days? Why is 30 days important?

Because it can build to a permanent peace initiative. And the reason why 30 days is important, it stops the killing. That's what President Trump wants to do. I don't know if she challenged them. I would have challenged them and said, Sergey Lavrov has said dozens of times, this is a non-starter. Why are you pushing it general? Yeah Exactly. I mean there has to be a kind of a land for peace formula Crimea and the independent Donbass Republics There's no way Russia is gonna accept anything less, right? That's what this war is about and remember before February 2022 it was the Ukrainian military attacking the population of the Donbass. There's no way that population, and attacking Crimea, there's no way that population wants to go back to Ukraine. So they just have to acknowledge the reality on the ground. Keith Kellogg refuses to do that. And who would trust the Americans at this point? There was a 30-day, there was a ceasefire in Gaza. The Trump administration came in, organized that,

and a green lit Israel completely fracturing the ceasefire. It defended it doing so, and it looks to the world like the Trump administration just gave Israel the ability to remobilize and rearm. So why would Russia trust the US that 30 days will actually lead to a permanent ceasefire? What they want to get is something permanent, right? They want to do something permanent. As with the Iranians, Tehran is not going to accept another JCPOA-style agreement that another

administration, like the Trump administration did can come in and shatter. So they want a permanent deal. And Saudi Arabia is heavily invested right now in trying to arrange a deal between Ukraine and Russia. They've even been pressuring Trump ahead of his May 15th visit to try to get something done before he comes there. Saudi Arabia is trying to emerge as a major negotiator on the world stage.

So there's a lot of pressure coming to Trump, but I actually think that it's becoming less and less likely that the US will broker any deal between Russia and Ukraine. And this will unfortunately be settled through force. Here's somebody who agrees with you. Cut number six. If you want a ceasefire just to continue supply arms to Ukraine, so what is your purpose?

You know what what Kyle Callous and what's his name, Mark Rute said about the the Secretary General and the European Union. They they bluntly stated that they can support only the deal, which at the end of the day will make Ukraine stronger, would make Ukraine a victor. So if this is the purpose of the ceasefire, I don't think this is what President Trump wants. This is what Europeans together with Zelensky want to make out of President Trump's initiative. Doesn't General Kellogg understand that? I think he's trying to make himself look good. I think he wants the war to continue.

I think he's at heart. He's at one with the Europeans that don't want peace. I think a lot of people are watching this. First of all, it's great to see Lavrov welcomed on a US network. It's very rare to see that, to hear this, at least hear the side of the Russians. And this is the result of Trump being in office and at least bringing them to the table, so there can be a debate. But I think after all the momentum coming out of the Zelensky meeting, where Zelensky was rightfully humiliated by Trump and JD Vance, there was a feeling like maybe the arms will stop flowing to Kiev and

there will be a real deal. And now, you know, outsiders, spectators, or observers are wondering who's sabotaging this from the inside? And Keith Kellogg seems to be one of these figures. He's someone before the Trump administration who had actually called for potential US boots on the ground in the form of trainers in Ukraine. Someone who is a fanatical China hawk and clearly doesn't have the chops or the desire for real binding agreement. Marco Rubio is another potential culprit. And so again, I don't, you have such a clash within the administration between the so-called restrainers, the JD

Vance figures who want a lasting settlement here, and the neocon light, Mike Waltz figures, that it's really hard to imagine that they get their act together and just acknowledge the reality on the ground, which is that the Ukrainian front line continues to collapse day after day after day. Thank you, Max. Thanks for your time. Much appreciated. We will reach out to Medea and I'll let you know if I get anywhere with Senator Grassley.

Yeah, good luck with that. Yeah, thank you. All the best for bringing that up. Sure. Coming up tomorrow at eight in the morning, Colonel Tony Schaefer at 11 in the morning, Aaron Maté at two in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at 3 in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC