Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : A Brief History of Israel

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Prof. John Mearsheimer : A Brief History of IsraelSee 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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unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash john. That's mintmobile.com slash john. Use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all of your existing contacts. Up front payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow about 35 gigabyte on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Thursday, August 7, 2025. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer. Thank you very much for your time.

I'm going to give the floor to you and you take as long as you want. Can you explain to us, please, as only you can, the origins of the state of Israel? Yeah, I'd be glad to do that. And let me start by making some comments, four sets of comments at about 60,000 feet, really general comments, and then drop down to 15,000 feet to make a handful of comments that are more specific, but fill in the general comments that I'll start with. Please. The first of my general comments is that when the Zionist enterprise got started around 1900, it's important to understand. that there were very few Jews, certainly very few Zionists in Palestine. You know, there was an adage at the time that this was a land with no people for a people, meaning the Jews who had no land. And of course, that was simply not true. There were a huge number of Palestinians living on that land. That's the first point you want to keep in mind.

Second point is there's no way you're going to create a Jewish state on that land that's filled with Palestinians without doing horrible things to the Palestinians, without creating great crimes. And common sense just tells you there's no way you could create a Jewish state and a piece of real estate that's filled with Palestinians, again, without doing great crimes. and that includes stealing their land. And it's very important to emphasize that the Zionists understood this from the get-go, David Ben-Gurion, Vladimir, Yabotinsky, and so forth and so on. They all fully understood this. Third point you want to keep in mind is that the Zionists from the get-go pay very careful attention to demography. They were very concerned with how many Palestinians,

Palestinians were in the land of Israel versus how many Jews there were. And 80% Jewish, 85% Jewish, that was acceptable. The ideal, of course, was to be 100% Jewish. But you didn't want to have more than 20% Palestinian population. So demographics mattered. The other thing that they paid enormous attention to was what was called transfer. We now call this ethnic cleansing. They talked about ethnic cleansing all the time. Not much in public, but in private they did because they fully understood that to create a Jewish state and a land filled with Palestinians, they were going to have to do transfer or ethnic cleansing. Final general point that you want to keep in mind is that from the beginning, almost all of the Zionist leaders had very expansive goals concerning

borders. They wanted to build a greater Israel that included lots of territory. This was not stated publicly by most of the leaders, and the leaders had different views on what that greater Israel should look like. But David Ben-Gurion, for example, wrote a book in Yiddish in 1918 where he laid out his vision, and it included what we call Greenline Israel, the Israel that was created after 1948, the occupied territories, that's the West Bank, and Gaza, parts of Syria, parts of Lebanon, parts of Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula. So you get a sense for how ambitious the Zionists were from the get-go. They wanted to create a greater Israel. And that's one of the principal reasons that Israel has no borders, no official

borders today. I believe it's the only country on the planet that does not have official borders because they're bent on creating a greater Israel, whatever that might look like. So that's the sort of big picture. But let's drop down to 15,000 feet and talk about the specifics. It's important to understand that few Jews came out of Europe to Palestine before 1933. And of course, 1933 is when Hitler comes to power. And I think there are about four million Jews who leave Europe. between 1880 and 1920, 1880 and 1920, about four million Jews in Europe, and only 100,000

go to Palestine. Many, of course, come to the United States. So you have this situation where there's not that many Jews in the land of Palestine. And then, of course, you have World War II, and after World War II, lots of Jews leave Europe and go to Israel. But, most Jews prefer to come west to come to places like Canada and the United States. So you have a situation in 1948 when the state is about to be created, where 35% of the population is Jewish and 7% of the land is owned by Jews. So you just want to think about it. This is 1948 when the state is created, 35% of the population

is Jewish in Palestine, and the Jews own 7% of the land. Let me just stop you here, Professor Mir Sharmer. How was the state created? How do you take somebody else's land and suddenly you become a recognized country? Okay. It's important to understand that up until World War I, the Ottoman Empire, or what we today call Turkey, controlled Palestine. and then as a result of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Britain took over control

of what was called mandatory Palestine. So Britain was in control. After World War II, when there was huge resistance around the world to colonial empires, i.e. there was huge resistance to the British Empire. The British were up to their eyeballs and alligators. trying to deal with resistance in places like India and in places like Palestine. The Israelis, then the Zionist, wanted independence from Britain. The British reached the point where they were just fed up. So on November 29, 1947, the UN, right, with the British in the driver's seat, pushed hard to create two states in Palestine, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. That's November 20, 1947. And of course, Israel is created in May of 1948, probably about six months later. So that's how Israel was created. It was created by the United Nations. And behind that was mainly the British, but also the United States went along with.

That's how it was created. Now, what you want to understand is that the map that the U.N. drew was not advantageous to Israel at all. First of all, they ended up with a very small amount of territory inside Palestine. And furthermore, they ended up with a population distribution that was about 55% Jewish and 35% Palestinian. Okay? And this was not something that the Zionist liked at all for obvious reasons. So in 1948, before Israel gets its independence, a war breaks out between the Palestinians and the Zionists as the British are leaving. And the Zionists take more territory than they were given in the UN plan, and they expel a huge number, probably about 700,000, maybe.

maybe 750,000 Palestinians. This is the infamous Nakhba. How did they expel them? They must have used violence. They didn't compensate them for their land, did they? They did use violence. And the fact is that many of the Palestinians left without putting up much resistance. And it was reasonably easy for the Zionists.

and then later the Israelis after May 1948 to drive the Palestinians out. And the end result is that you get a state in 1948, which we call Green Line Israel. This is the Israel created by the 1948 war that's bigger than the Israel that was allotted to the Jews in the UN plan. And furthermore, after all, the ethnic cleansing is a bit of. about 80% Jewish and 20% Palestinian, okay? So that's the first big event. The second big event, which is, of course, of enormous importance, is the 1967 war, the famous Six-Day War. In the Six-Day War, the Israelis conquer the West Bank and Gaza. These are the occupied territories. I might add parenthetically that they also capture the Golan Heights.

In the process of capturing the West Bank and capturing Gaza, they drive 200,000 more Palestinians, mainly out of the West Bank and into Jordan. So this is the second big ethnic cleansing. The first one was the Nakhba in 1948, where you drive out about 700, 750,000 Palestinians. And then in 1967, you drive out another 200,000 Palestinians and 80,000 Syrians off the Golan Heights, as I said. Now, the problem that the Israelis face, once they conquer all this territory, is that the number of Palestinians and the number of Israeli Jews in Greater Israel. Greater Israel is the Israel of 1948 plus those two occupied territories. In these three pieces of real estate, you have roughly 7.3 million Jews and 7.3 million Palestinians.

And I told you how much attention the Israelis paid to demographics. And at worst, they would accept 80-20. They really wanted 100-0. But here you have basically 50-50. And the demographic trends tell you that over time the Palestinians will outnumber the Israeli Jews. So this is a huge problem. Then you have October 7th. And you want to think about October 7th in the context of the problem I just described.

What the Israelis want to do, right, is they want to cleanse the Palestinians. They want to get the ratio down to at least 80, 20. It's 50-50, 7.3 versus 7.3. It's not 50-50 now, is it? It's probably still close to 50-50. I mean, it's hard to tell exactly how many Palestinians have been killed, but let's assume that 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, not the 60,000 number that's frequently used. That would drive the number from 7.3 down to 7.2.

And one could argue that, you know, a significant number of Israelis have left the country and are not coming back. I see. You have somewhere in the range of 50-50. But even if it's 45% Palestinian and 55% Jewish, this is unacceptable to the Israelis, especially when you think about projected birth rates. So you see, what October 7th does for the Israelis is present an opportunity for the third big ethnic cleansing. And again, I want to emphasize that ethnic cleansing, or what the early Zionist called transfer, has been in their minds from the

beginning, because there's no way you create a reasonably homogeneous Jewish state in a sea of Palestinians without ethnically cleansing them, right? So anyway, what's going on in Gaza is ethnic cleansing. The other thing that you see happening, which doesn't get that much attention today, but we don't want to lose sight of, and this is my final point, is that the Israelis have occupied southern Lebanon and they have occupied southern Syria. And I do not believe they have any intention of leaving because they are interested in creating a greater Israel that goes beyond Green Line Israel,

that's the Israel of 1948 plus Gaza plus the West Bank. So this is not only an opportunity, the events after October 7th, not only an opportunity to ethnically cleanse, it's an opportunity to expand the borders of Israel or to create Laban's route. Let's go back to 1948 when the state of Israel was created. Was the state of Palestine recognized by the UN?

Sure. It was a two-state solution. And what became of the state of Palestine? Well, what became of the state of Palestine is that the Jordanians basically took control of the Gaza, I mean, took control of the West Bank and the Egyptian. Egyptians took control of the Gaza Strip. So it was sort of a de facto state, but in de jure, it was the Jordanians and the Egyptians who were in charge.

But there still was some legal mechanism emanating from the UN, which was very new in 1948, which characterized Palestine as a sovereign state recognized by the only international body existing at the time i'm not sure about that i'd have to go back and look to be honest exactly what the language was okay okay uh you were asked in one of the famous lectures that you gave a few years ago not that long ago i think it was before or after october seventh uh if the israelis can ever be held accountable for their aberrant behavior behavior. Here's how you answered it. Cut number 21. If I went to the Middle East and visited Israel and I was killed, somebody shot me there,

do you think there'd be any accountability? Seriously. If any of you went to the Middle East and were killed, do you think there'd be accountability? They wouldn't be. This is how outrageous the situation is. Just think about the liberty. Think about Rachel Corrie. Think about this Turkish American who was just killed in the flotilla. There's no accountability. Israelis can do almost anything and get away with it. So the idea that opacity matters, I don't think so.

The lobby basically believes it can finesse any issue. They've never seen an issue that they can't finesse. Why is that the Israelis can get away with anything? Because of the power of the lobby in the United States. It's impossible or has been up to now, impossible for any American president to really go after the Israelis and punish anybody for killing Americans because they pay a significant political price. And does the lobby have this kind of power outside of the United States? Does it have power in France? Does it have power in Great Britain? Does it have power in Germany? Does it have power in Spain or Portugal or Italy? I'd say yes to all those countries,

and you definitely want to add Australia and Canada as well. You'd be shocked at how much power the lobby has in Australia and Canada. And if you have any doubts or any of the viewers have any doubts about the power of the lobby in Britain, just take a look at what happened to Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn looked like he might be prime minister. He's very critical of Israel and wanted Britain to treat Israel like a normal country. And the lobby basically destroyed his political career.

How can this change? I'm not sure. I don't have a good answer to that question at this point in time. The lobby is just so powerful. I mean, most people are reluctant to say that because you get accused of being an anti-Semite. Right, right. Well, you've been accused of so many things, and you're so intellectually honest and so courageous. I'm sure it bounces off your back.

I mean, just a few hours ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced his intention. I don't know if his so-called Security Council or Security Cabinet has voted on this yet, to use the IDF to occupy Gaza, this notwithstanding the persistent opposition of the head of the IDF, the three-star general that commands it, and notwithstanding what is probably the opposition of most Israelis. Can he get away with this militarily, or is this a disaster that he's walking into? Well, I think that if the cabinet backs him up, which I would assume will happen, he can do it. He can execute it. The question you have to ask yourself is, do you think that he's going to succeed? I mean, what he's claiming he can do is finish off Hamas once and for all and pacify Gaza. I would argue, by the way, that his real goal is to finish the ethnic cleansing. But leaving that aside for the moment, do you believe that he can finish you off Hamas? And you want to understand that on May 16th, they launched, they meaning the Israelis,

launched this huge military operation in Gaza called Gideon's Chariots. And it just ended earlier this month, earlier in August. And it was a failure by all accounts. It was designed to do with what this new operation. is designed to do, i.e. Finnish off Hamas, and they failed to do that. And this is why the chief of staff of the IDF, and this general was hand-picked recently by Netanyahu, is adamantly opposed to another offensive. It's why all sorts of security officials, ex-security officials, who've occupied the highest positions inside the Israeli national security establishment are adamantly opposed to this operation.

So there is huge opposition. That opposition is predicated on the assumption that it's going to fail. And lots of Israelis are going to get killed. Lots of Palestinians are going to get killed. And Israel's reputation, which is already in the toilet bowl, is going to be even worse off as a result of this operation. So they're opposed. But can Netanyahu do it if he wants and he gets permission from the cabinet? The answer is yes.

Does he need permission from Donald Trump? Or does he give permission to Trump? Which way does permission flow between Netanyahu and Trump? You're assuming he would ask permission. Why would he ask permission? He doesn't need Donald Trump's permission. He does what he wants and he understands full well that Donald Trump will back him. By the way, if you look at leaders all around the world,

and this includes Western leaders, even in places like Germany, all of these leaders are very strong. skittish about what is happening in Gaza. And they are putting pressure on the Israelis to put an end to this offensive in Gaza. And this includes the chancellor in Germany, right? But there is no evidence that President Trump is bothered at all by what is happening in Gaza. And there is no evidence that he is putting any pressure on Israel. So again, why would Prime Minister Netanyahu, worry about what Donald Trump thinks about another offensive in Gaza, when we've heard, or he's heard, hardly a peep from Trump in the past.

Trump was asked, would you support Israel reoccupying all of Gaza? And his answer, of course, is all over the place, but the bottom line is he doesn't know. Chris, cut number five. Would you support Israel reoccupying all of Gaza as has been suggested by some Israeli officials? Well, I don't know what the suggestion is. I know that we are there now trying to get people fed. As you know, $60 million was given by the United States fairly recently to supply food and a lot of food, frankly, for the people of Gaza that are obviously not doing too well with the food. And I know Israel is going to help us with that in terms of distribution.

and also money. We also have the Arab states are going to help us with that in terms of the money and possibly distribution. So that's what I'm focused on. As far as the rest of it, I really can't say

that's going to be pretty much up to Israel. Yeah, please. Catch up to Israel. He doesn't know what he's talking about with the food. The organization he's talking about is run by Mossad. According to Max Blumenthal

and Aaron Mote, they have reduced 400 food distribution centers to three or four. That's what the United States is paying for. And he wants to be thanked, he wants to be thanked for that. But just let me say, his answer, mirror images what I said. He said it's up to Israel. Yes.

Whether or not they occupy Gaza. And that's exactly what you'd expect from him. And, of course, he's focusing on the food situation because that's what has people all around the world, including West European leaders, up in arms. And again, he is the only leader who's not in up in arms, up in arms. He's doing a bit to sort of ameliorate the problem because he doesn't like the criticism that's being directed at him. Here he is. Yesterday, you said many times that you want to stop wars in the Middle East, watch us. are cut number 14. You said many times that you want to stop wars in the Middle East.

Now, Prime Minister Netanyahu is contemplating reoccupying Gaza entirely. Is he defined you, sir, or are you giving him a green light? Well, we have stopped wars in the Middle East by stopping Iran from having a nuclear weapon, and they are, you know, they can say they're going to start all over again, but that's a very dangerous thing for them to do, because we'll be back. As soon as they start, we'll be back. Your colleague, Professor Postal at MIT, says they have a nuclear weapon already that Trump doesn't know what he's talking about. Of course, he dodged the question whether or not he supports

Israel occupying Gaza. Suppose Netanyahu requests American troops on the ground in Gaza, not to help feed the Palestinians, but to help kill them. What will Trump do? that I think he would resist. I find it hard to imagine him doing that. And I actually find it hard to imagine Netanyahu asking Trump to do that. I would imagine that Netanyahu fears that the United States will get deeply involved in Gaza, especially in terms of feeding the local population. And that'll make it much more difficult for Netanyahu then to cleanse Gaza or to control.

it the way he would like. I mean, what they want to do, what the Israelis want to do now is that they want to create concentration camps in Gaza. Gaza, as you know, before October 7th was one giant concentration camp, but they're now occupying huge chunks of Gaza, well over 50% of the territory. And what they want to do is that they want, is they want to concentrate the Gaza population, in camps, in concentration camps. I mean, really what they wanted to do, at least what Netanyahu wanted to do, was he wanted to put him in death camps. You understand in Europe during the Holocaust, there was a difference between concentration camps and death camps. Death camps were where you took Jews and others to be murdered outright. Concentration camps, a lot of death certainly took place

in those concentration camps, but they were different than death camps. And what the Israelis initially wanted to do was turn those camps in Gaza into death camps. They wanted to starve the Palestinians to death, right, or killed them from the air. And that's what they were doing. That's why the world is up in arms, because all of those people were dying and were on the verge of a famine. So you can't do that anymore. Don't wear death camps. So what you've got to do is you go to concentration camps. And what you do is you put people in small pieces of territory, and you give them enough food and water and medicine to survive. But they live like animals inside these concentration camps. Why can there be no more death camps?

Who would stop Netanyahu? I think that world opinion turned so completely on Israel in recent. weeks that the Israelis have been forced to back off. The Israelis and most of their supporters in the United States have been forced to back off. And they're now talking about allowing food and medicine and water into Gaza. But that's it. They're not talking about rebuilding Gaza. They're not talking about Palestinian self-determination. Because again, you have to understand that the goal here is to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And by the way, as many of your guests have pointed out on this show,

ethically cleansing Gaza enjoys widespread support inside of Israel. We, in the West, like to portray Netanyahu as an outlier. And the argument is, if you only get rid of Netanyahu and you replace him with another more reasonable leader, all these problems will go away. This is ridiculous. The political center of gravity in Israel is far to the right. it's extremely hostile to the Palestinians. And the reason that Benjamin Netanyahu is in power

and has survived for so long, even though he was in the driver's seat on October 7th, is because his thinking about how to deal with the Palestinians is reflected in the larger population. So anyway, you'll have little resistance inside Israel to putting these people in concentration camps. And I would argue that you'd have little, resistance of these concentration camps turned into death camps. But you would have major league

resistance outside of Israel. And that's what's happened over the past couple weeks. And that's why the Israelis have backed off somewhat. Here's the show you how obsequious the United States is. Here's the person second in line to the presidency of the United States right after the vice president in Israel yesterday, cut number 19. The Israeli government approved you to bring your five pets. So what biblical town in the West Bank did Mike Johnson visit? Well, let's take a look. Who is that American tourist in the blue shirt and the khakis there?

Well, there he is. Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Where is Mike Johnson? Where is that crowd? Shiloh. Checking out the heifers? Got to look at the heifers. Got to check out your he

When he said Your pets, by the way When he said they allowed you to bring your pets There is an export ban on cattle From the United States to Israel So what they did is they said they're pets They classified them as pets They flew them on a Boeing 777

The Speaker of the House of Representatives Intimately involved in this Red Heifer prophecy Hi, I'm Mike Johnson. I'm the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States Congress. We are so blessed to be here at ancient Shiloh, as they say here. We had a number of members of Congress here to pray. We pray for our nation and for peace in Jerusalem, peace for Israel. And we're so grateful to be joined by all of our friends.

Thank you. The reference to the heifers was the illegal importation of five heifers from Texas. us to Shiloh to be ritually slaughtered in furtherance of what Mike Johnson believes is some prophecy from the Old Testament. You can't make this stuff up. It's hard to believe where we are as a country. It's hard to feel good as an American these days. I hope that J.D. Vance stays very healthy, and Mike Johnson is nowhere near the seat of power. Of course, it's the Speaker of the House representatives, he already has enormous power, but this is the mentality that we're dealing with, Professor Mearsheimer. Thank you very much for all of this. I have longed, wanted to put

on tape your understanding of the origins of Israel, and now we have it for everyone to see. It's always a pleasure. I know you did a lot of the talking, but you're so good at it. There's nobody better, and it's deeply appreciated it. We look forward to seeing you again next week. Likewise. Have a good weekend, Judge. Thank you. You as well. Coming up at 4 o'clock today on all of this and on Ukraine and on President Trump meeting with President Putin and on the condition imposed on that meeting at the last minute by the White House that Vladimir Zelensky be there. Who better to talk about all of this than Colonel Douglas McGregor? Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.