Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : Donor Class vs. the First Amendment.

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Donor Class vs. the First Amendment.See 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 Friday, May 17th, 2024. Professor John Mears Sharma will be with us in just a moment on the donor class in America versus the freedom of speech and President Putin in China. What is that all about? But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. You have $100 in the bank. It still shows $100, but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less. Inflation has reduced all of your savings, all of your buying power and mine by 24%. And gold is largely immune from that. If you want to learn how gold will soon hit $3,200 an ounce,

call Lear Capital. 800-511-4620 or go to learjudsnap.com. Get your free gold report. Same experts who predicted the 23% rise that I've enjoyed have predicted this $3,200 an ounce gold. Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Professor Mearsheimer, welcome. Welcome to the show. Before we start, I have to chuckle a little. One of the viewers obviously watching the gold commercial said the judge made 24% of his investment. He buys the drinks tonight. Well, I could if I would. I would if I could, since I love all of you for your faithful loyalty to the show. Professor Mearsheimer, welcome here. Before we start, I want to ask you a question about terminology because a viewer corrected me on this, and I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

The donor class, AIPAC and that group in America, more properly called the Jewish lobby or the Israeli lobby? Well, it's not a good idea to refer to it as the Jewish lobby, because that implies that all Jews are in the lobby, and it implies as well that the lobby is only comprised of Jews. The fact is that there are a good number of Jews, some of whom you have on your show, who are opposed to the policies that the lobby is pushing and in no way could be considered part of the lobby. Furthermore, there are these Christian Zionists in the land who are deeply committed to Israel, who are part of the lobby. The problem here is when you start talking about the donor class and you talk about what's going

on today with all the influence that the donor class is putting on politicians and university presidents and police officials to act against the protesters, that donor class is basically rich Jewish businessmen. So it makes it easy for people to think that the Israel lobby is really the Jewish lobby. But I would argue that's a mistake, even though it is the case that these are rich Jewish donors who are in the news today. All right. So I was corrected by a rich Jewish American physician who very much agrees with us on all of this. And he said, please don't call it the Jewish lobby for the very same reasons that you just articulated. But you're the expert on this. I'm happy to stand corrected, and I'll refer to it as the Israeli lobby or

the donor class. How can the donor class or the Israeli lobby, APEC and that group, justify what they are doing to suppress free speech? You and I sent some articles to each other from the New York Times last week, which revealed, I don't know how the Times got this, emails from very wealthy Jewish businessmen to presidents of colleges and universities saying, you better shut down those demonstrators right now, whether they're engaged in acts of violence or not. It's speech that we can't tolerate. Well, the fact is that supporters of Israel cannot tolerate an open discourse about Israel and what it's doing to the Palestinians. They just can't tolerate that because Israel loses if there is an open debate. So what the lobby is doing is going to enormous lengths to shut down the discourse,

to do everything they can to end the protests. And if you read this amazing article in the Washington Post today about the efforts of rich Jewish donors to shut down the protest. You see this behavior clearly laid out in great detail. In fact, it's thoroughly documented. And again, what they're doing is just trying to shut down the discourse, which is another way of saying suppress free speech. Did the great University of Chicago, on whose faculty you sit in an endowed chair, once known as the mother of free speech amongst major high-end academic institutions, cave and call in the police to shut down lawful nonviolent demonstrators.

Yes, with one caveat. They didn't call in the Chicago police. They used the university security forces to end the protest. But I think the essence of what you say is correct. I was actually seeing what justification did this person have? Whoever the president is must know the rich tradition going back to then president and soon to be Attorney General Edward Levy. But why the radical change? Is it the donor class putting pressure on him or her, whoever the president is? We don't have any hard evidence as to what happened in the Chicago case. There are some of these other cases where you can see evidence, for example, in the Harvard case and in the

Columbia case, but there's no hard evidence of the lobby's influence in the case of Chicago. But I'd be willing to bet a substantial chunk of money that enormous pressure was brought to bear on the Chicago president to end these protests as quickly as possible or to tear down the encampments. And he did that. And I think he made a fundamental mistake. there sits on the faculty of the University of Chicago, the foremost explainer in the world of all of this, the person to whom I'm speaking now, I'm going to guess he didn't call you first. No, that's, I think, unthinkable. It would not have been smart on his part to call me because of the fact that I wrote the Israel Lobby article and book, and I am in a sense radioactive. And therefore, if he called me, that would cause him all sorts of problems. But the

truth is he should have called me. And by the way, I think in the Harvard case, the Harvard president who was thrown overboard by the lobby, Claudine Gay, he would have been very smart if she had talked to Steve Walt at great length at the beginning of the crisis, because Steve is very wise about these issues, and he could have told her all sorts of things about what was coming and how to act. Now, he's your co-author, right? Right. Steve Walt, who's at Harvard, and I wrote the Israel Lobby article and the book, and he, I think, could have given Claudine Gay some very good advice. I'm not sure it would have worked in the end. The lobby is just

so powerful here. I mean, they ended up not only pushing Claudine Gay overboard at Harvard, but they pushed the Penn president overboard. And I think there's all sorts of evidence that the Cornell president, who is now resigning, is resigning over this issue. Wow. Why do you say that if there is a free, fair, and open debate in America, that Israel will lose the PR war, lose the debate effectively? Well, the argument that Israel's supporters like to make is that it shares our values, Israel shares our values, that it's a liberal democracy, that it's a strategic asset, and that we benefit greatly from supporting Israel. And all these charges about Israel being an apartheid state and engaging in a genocidal campaign against the Palestinians

is sheer nonsense. That's the argument that the lobby wants to make so that the United States and Israel remain joined at the hip. But all of that's nonsense. The idea that Israel is a liberal democracy that shares our values might have shared our values when you're talking about the Jim Crow South, but it certainly doesn't share our values today. And it's not a liberal democracy. This is a country that's not liberal at all. And if you look at the Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank, you can't even call it a democracy. And if you look at what's going on in Gaza today, what is happening is that an apartheid state is engaged in a genocidal campaign against

the Palestinians. And this is a message or a story that Israel's supporters absolutely do not want to be pervade in the mainstream discourse. And they're therefore doing everything they can to shut it down. Is Israel a strategic asset for the United States of America in any respect, militarily, politically, geopolitically, whatever adverb you want to use? No, it's a strategic liability. As I've said on a number of occasions, it's an albatross around their neck. We need this conflict in Gaza like we need a hole in the head. The United States has long been interested in trying to get a two-state solution in the Middle East so that the Israelis and the Palestinians can live side by side in a relatively peaceful situation. We've been unable to do that. And as long as you have an apartheid state where the

Israeli Jews dominate the Palestinians inside of greater Israel, you're going to have trouble for as far as the eye can see. You're going to have a first intifada, a second intifada, and you're going to have an October 7th. So we've worked hard to, you know, put this situation to bed and create a stable Israel, but we failed. And the end result is we have all this trouble and it does not play to our advantage. Is Israel in trouble today, Professor Mearsheimer? It's in serious trouble. I mean, just to take one cut at it, in 2005, Ariel Sharon pulled Israeli settlers and Israeli troops out of Gaza because Sharon understood that the Gaza Strip was a hornet's nest and that Israel was best suited to be outside of it. The idea was to turn it into a giant open

air prison, which of course is what they did. But if you look at what's happened now, the Israelis are back in Gaza and they're basically going to have to run Gaza because there's nobody else that they're going to let in to run Gaza. And they're basically back in the hornet's nest. So they're in real trouble on that front. Furthermore, if you look at what's happened with regard to the conflict with Hezbollah, the exchange of rockets and missiles in northern Israel, and if you look at the exchange between Iran and Israel between April 1st and April 19th, what you see is that the Israelis did not have escalation dominance as they have had in the past. Iran was able to target Israel with a massive number of ballistic missiles,

cruise missiles, and drones. Not many of them got through for sure, but it was a massive attack. And Israel, when it retaliated on April 19th, only retaliated by attacking one radar inside of Iran. It was a very small, very minor response. And this is because Israel is not in a position today to engage in a major conflict with Iran, and the United States certainly wouldn't want that to happen. So if you look at the fact that Israel is back in Gaza and has no way of getting out, number one, and number two, you look at the fact that its ability to escalate against adversaries like Hezbollah and Iran has been greatly reduced because they have lots of rockets and lots of missiles, you see that Israel's deterrence capability is not what it once was. So Israel's in real trouble.

Back to the Israeli lobby. Is it concerned with any other foreign policy ventures of United States imperialism like Ukraine, or does it just concern itself with the United States and Israel? This is a very interesting question. The fact is that the lobby is deeply interested in seeing the United States involved militarily all over the planet. The reason is that if the United States is intervening all over the planet, that means it will have a commitment to intervening in Israel. You don't want a situation where the United States pulls back its forces, implements a policy, a foreign policy of restraint, and is very reluctant to interfere in other places around the world. Because if that's the case, it means that Israel may get into a

conflict and the United States might not be willing to intervene on its behalf. So the lobby over time has had a deep-seated interest in seeing the United States pursue a very aggressive foreign policy all across the globe. Can Israel survive economically, totally isolated, but for the U.S.? Well, it won't be totally isolated because the Europeans and many of the countries in the Middle East, for that matter, will continue to trade with Israel. I don't think there's any danger of Israel not surviving economically. And if it ever gets to that point, if I'm proved wrong, the United States will then intervene with other countries and put tremendous leverage on those

other countries to engage in economic intercourse with Israel. So I don't think there's any serious danger of Israel dying of economic strangulation or anything like that. The bigger problems that Israel face are political in nature, and they have to do with internal problems like the Palestinians, and the fact that there are a whole host of centrifugal forces at play inside of Israel that we haven't talked about that are threatening to tear the country apart. All right. Before we get to those, one more question on the economy. Surely the economy is, I want to use a technical word like depressed, not doing as well as it was on October 6th because of the lack of Arab workers and the imposition of the draft and the resettlement of settlers in the West Bank. These events have surely hurt the Israelis economically, no?

Yeah, there's no question about that. And you didn't mention tourism, which is another important source of income that has dried up in good part as a result of this conflict. There's no question that the Israeli economy has been hurt. How much remains to be seen. And you also want to remember that the United States will go to great lengths to bail the Israelis out. The Israelis don't pay a lot of money for all the weaponry that they're using against the Palestinians, because we basically give it to the Israelis. We give them huge amounts of military equipment, basically cost free or for some minimal price. So it's not clear that the economy will be that badly damaged. Has Prime Minister Netanyahu painted himself into a corner? You alluded earlier, and I'm going to tease you a little bit because I want to save some time to

talk about one of your favorite subjects, which is China, where President Putin is, but I have a few more follow-up questions on Israel. You alluded earlier to domestic issues, I think you said, that could potentially tear Israel apart. I don't want to put words in your mouth. Of what are you speaking? Well, I mean, Israel in a very important way has divided itself into two different societies. One is an extreme right-wing, quite messianic group of people. And then there are the more traditional mainstream European-oriented Israelis, and they are often at each other's throat. And you want to remember before October 7th, there were these attempts by the Netanyahu government to change the basic laws so that the Supreme Court's influence on the political situation inside of Israel was significantly reduced. And what happened

was there were huge protests, huge protests day after day. And there was all sorts of talk in the Israeli press about a possible civil war breaking out between the extreme right and the center right inside of Israel. That's one set of centrifugal forces. The other has to do with- Before you go to the other, is that adversarial nature still there? Yes, that hasn't been settled. It's been put on the back burner in large part because of the war in Gaza. But once that war comes to an end, or at least once the shooting starts, that issue will be back on the table. There is a real divide inside of Israel, not altogether unlike the red-blue divide inside the United States. I don't want to argue that the center-right in Israel is liberal the way

the blue side is in the United States, but there is a huge difference between people on the far right inside of Israel and the center right. And by the way, Benjamin Netanyahu is basically center right. He has people who are far to the right of him inside his cabinet. But that divide is not to be underestimated as a source of trouble. Would he risk the dissolution of his government and the need for an election in the middle of a war if he negotiates a ceasefire with Hamas or fails to invade Rafah with enough severity to please the right wing? I think the answer is no. I think that he's going to great lengths to make sure this war keeps going so that he can remain in power. I don't think he has any interest in ending it anytime soon, because if he does end it and Hamas is not defeated, and let's face it, he's not going to defeat Hamas,

then he's going to be in real trouble and his government will probably fall apart. For purposes of Netanyahu's staying in power, it makes more sense for him to say that before we get out of Gaza and before we end the war, we have to categorically defeat Hamas. And because he can't categorically defeat Hamas, that means the war will go on forever. And if the war goes on forever, that minimizes the chances that he'll be thrown out of power anytime soon. So he's clearly somebody who doesn't have an interest in settling this one soon. He was asked by Haaretz, which I know you read every day, about four or five days ago,

how long he thought the war would go on. And he just shot out off the top of his head, or maybe he thinks about it ahead of time, about 10 years. 10 years? Can you see this war going on for ten years? Well, as I said before, I think the conflict is going to go on forever and ever, right? There's no solution that I see to this conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The point is that sometimes the shooting stops and you have a long pause. Again, think about Intifada I, Intifada II, and then think about October 7th. These

happened at different points since the late 1980s. And in between, you had periods of, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, relative peace. So at some point, the war in Gaza will end, the shooting will end, but the conflict, the basic conflict will remain intact. And somewhere down the road, you'll have another uprising. But what Netanyahu wants to do is he wants to fuel the fires that keep this conflict going for as long as possible, because once it stops, then he will face a day of reckoning, and he doesn't want that. Transitioning to China, how significant is the red carpet that President Xi rolled out for President Putin in Beijing today? Actually, it was yesterday. Well, I think it's important symbolically because it shows the extent to which the Chinese and the Russians have come together to balance against the United States. As you know, the United States has its crosshairs on both China and Russia.

We view them as mortal adversaries. And what we've done is drive them together. And we knew that they had become close allies. But when you see this meeting taking place in Beijing between Putin and Xi Jinping, it makes it manifestly clear that they have become close allies, and they're going to work together to thwart the United States at every turn. They've issued this large communique that makes it clear that they are determined to work together to undermine the United States' efforts to hurt them. What is the nature? Well, let me restate it. Is this relationship new or just more public, more refined?

No, it's not new, and it's been quite public. But this is, I think, a quite prominent demonstration of how close the two sides have become. Chris, let's run cut number two. This is President Putin. It's in Russian. So I will be reading the subtitles so that if people are listening to the show as opposed to watching it, they can understand what President Putin is saying.

This is President Putin yesterday, Chinese time. As for what is happening in the Kharkiv direction, this is also their fault, because they shoot and unfortunately continue to shoot residential areas of the border territories, including Belograd. Civilians are dying there. It is obvious they are shooting right in the city center in residential areas. I said publicly that if this continues, we will be forced to create a safety zone, a sanitary zone. This is what we are doing. As for Kharkiv, there are no such plans today

to capture the city. Would you expect him to be making comments about the movement of his troops in Ukraine while he's in Beijing without a great level of comfort and support from President Xi? Well, I think that what he's trying to do is explain to the world, including the Chinese, that he is not aggressive vis-a-vis Ukraine. And the reason that the Russians have launched this new offensive into the Kharkiv oblast, towards the city of Kharkiv, is he is saying because the Ukrainians were using Kharkiv as a launching pad to hit the Russian city of Belgorod. So what the Russians are doing in Putin's story is they're engaged in self-defense. They have moved into Ukraine, into Kharkiv, for the purposes of creating a zone that will allow them to protect themselves from Ukrainian attacks. That's what he's doing. This is for public relations purposes. Because we know that the Ukrainians cannot protect themselves from the Russian attacks. The Russians seem to be moving

westward slowly but inexorably without much serious resistance at all, notwithstanding the so-called $60 billion, two-thirds of which will never get there, that the Congress just authorized. Yeah, but the other thing you want to remember is that the Russians, in addition to moving westward in steamroller-like fashion, have now invaded Ukraine from the north. This is what Putin is talking about. This is the invasion into the Kharkiv Oblast. And my argument for a long time has been that the Russians would inevitably invade Kharkiv and that they would try to conquer Kharkiv and make Kharkiv part of matter of self-defense, protecting Russian territory from attacks from the Kharkiv region. I think it's actually much more than that. And I think the Russians are on the march, not only westward, but now they've moved into the Kharkiv region. And what you're going to see over the next few months is the Russians taking more and more territory in Ukraine.

Is the Chinese government supplying them with military equipment and ammunition, or do they not need it from the Chinese? It's not clear to me that they need ammunition. I think that they've been getting ammunition from places like North Korea. They've been getting drones from Iran. And they've surely been getting military equipment from China. Exactly. They've been getting drones from Iran, and they've surely been getting military equipment from China. Exactly what they've been getting is hard to say. Many people think that what they're really getting is a lot of sophisticated technology like microchips. But there's no question that the Chinese have a deep-seated interest in making sure the Russians don't lose this war, and they will do everything that's

necessary to help keep the Russians on their feet. But the fact is, at this point, I don't think the Chinese have to do that much because the Russians are in the catbird seat. The Russians are doing very well. You want to remember that the Russians have a very potent or powerful industrial base that has allowed them to produce the weaponry to stand up to the Ukrainians when they were being supported by the West with all sorts of fancy weaponry. The West can no longer supply them with that fancy weaponry in sufficient numbers, yet the Russians have continued to produce massive numbers of artillery shells, tanks, artillery tubes, and so forth and so on. So the Russians are now on the march. How much of a setback for the neocon mentality in the State Department is this Sino-Russian alliance?

It is something of a setback. There's no question about that. I mean, the basic neoconservative approach to the world, which is reflected in large part in American foreign policy, is in deep trouble these days. Look at what's happening in Ukraine. It's a disastrous situation from America's point of view. We're going to lose in Ukraine. And then if you go back to the Middle East where we started, the Israelis are in deep trouble. We're in deep trouble. We have no solution to the problem in Gaza. The Israelis consistently thumb their nose at us and we can't seem to get them to do anything that we want. And then as you point out, the Russians and the Chinese have jumped into bed together.

They're now close allies. They're working together to do everything they can to thwart us. And they are part of the global South. They are part of BRICS. And there are lots of other countries besides the Russians and the Chinese who are deeply unhappy with us. And they too are causing us all sorts of problems. So American foreign policy today is in terrible shape. I'm going to show you a clip of the Secretary of State of the United States in a basement bar in Kiev. I don't know if you've seen this, but tell me what you think of it. The United States is with you. So much of the world is with you.

And they're fighting not just for a free Ukraine, but for the free world. And the free world is with you, too. So maybe we can try something? Yeah, sure. I don't know if we can. The music, because of copyright issues, it's Neil Young's song about freedom, which I think the secretary, I submit the secretary of state is misinterpreted and misused. But what does he gain by that type of thing? He doesn't gain anything. And in fact, he loses.

I found it hard to believe that he did that. He's the Secretary of State of the United States. He's not supposed to do things like that. I have the sense watching Blinken behave that he's clueless about what is required of him as Secretary of State. I mean, here's a situation where Ukraine is in desperate straits. I mean, really desperate straits. And he's over there playing the guitar. This is just, in my opinion, inappropriate. He should not be doing this. Do you think the mentality that produced this war, you know, going back to 2004, will admit that they were wrong?

No, nobody ever admits they're wrong in the American foreign policy establishment. You should know that. And we can get away with it because we have no accountability in the system. You know, in a few years, Jake Sullivan will probably be Secretary of State, even though he's responsible for all these disasters. It just doesn't matter. And the Republicans don't hold the Democrats responsible for their failures, and vice versa is true. The Republicans and the Democrats are like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. This is the same Jake Sullivan, cut number 12, Chris, who said this about genocide. We believe Israel can and must do more to ensure the protection and well-being of innocent

civilians. We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We have been firmly on record rejecting that proposition. He's blind to the reality in front of him, Professor. There's no question about that, but nobody in the administration, nobody in the mainstream media is going to come out and say that Israel is engaged in a genocide because the lobby doesn't tolerate that. And the lobby basically dictates what Jake Sullivan says on these matters. My question to Jake would be,

okay, you don't want to call it genocide. What do you call it? Mass murder? If it's not genocide, is it mass murder? And you notice that he doesn't have any words to describe what the Israelis are doing. All he wants to do is drive home the point that it's not genocide. And I think it is genocide, but I fully understand you could argue it's not genocide. But if you make that argument, then you have to ante up as to what you think it is. And I think if it's not genocide, you have to admit that it's mass murder. It's just horrendous behavior. It's hard to believe that we are tolerating the Israelis doing this to the Palestinians. Oh, we're not just tolerating it, we're supporting it. That's exactly right. They could not engage in this genocide without us providing them with the weaponry and the diplomatic cover. It's just hard to believe.

But he, of course, doesn't want to say that Israel is engaged in genocide because then he, Jake Sullivan, would be complicitous in a genocide. And he could potentially be a defendant in the dock at some point in the future since there's no statute. He's a young man. There's no statute of limitations on war crimes in the International Criminal Court. Professor Mershshammer, it's a pleasure, my dear friend. I'm sorry I kept you so long, but these are fascinating conversations. We really covered the gamut from Israel to Ukraine to Beijing, back to Washington. Thank you very much for your time.

I know you just got home from Australia. I deeply appreciate your coming on with us. I look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you. I look forward too. Thank you next week. Thank you. I look forward to. Thank you, Professor. A great man whose thoughts are extremely valuable to us. Coming up at four o'clock, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and at five o'clock, everybody's favorite, end of the week, end of the day, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, the Intelligence Community Roundtable.

Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.