Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern: Is CIA infiltrating &undermining the ICJ with anti-war lawfare?

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Ray McGovern: Is CIA infiltrating &undermining the ICJ with anti-war lawfare?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 Monday, January 15th, 2023. It's a federal holiday. It's a national holiday in the United States, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Ray McGovern joins us now. Ray, thank you for joining us. A couple of things about Martin Luther King that will get us started. Here is a clip of Cornel West, whom you and I both know, speaking to a huge audience yesterday in Washington, D.C., estimated to be as large as 200,000. I don't know exactly the number, but it's interesting. It's a memorial for Dr. King and a protest of the American government complicity in the slaughter in Gaza. Take a listen. Yes, it's indeed true that Brother Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 95 years old on Monday.

So I'm here to let my precious Palestinian brothers and sisters and siblings know that when I think of where I come from, for every generation we have love warriors who are willing to live and who are willing to die. Martin Luther King Jr. said, I'd rather be dead than afraid. I'd rather be a corpse than a coward. We need courage. I'd rather be a corpse than a coward. We need courage. I'd rather be a corpse than a coward. I'd never heard that one attributed to him before, Ray. Of course, he was extremely courageous and gave up his life for the belief that there is a scene.

That's Washington, D.C. You probably didn't see that on the news. That's a European news coverage of an enormous march in Washington, D.C. yesterday. Your thoughts on Martin Luther King before we move on to contemporary issues, Ray? Well, today he would have been 95. He was quite a witness, and he's been marginalized. I've seen the mountaintop, and no one knows what that means. When I gave courses, I was always able to weave in

Dr. King's letter from the Birmingham City Journal. And one quote struck me more than others. Each one has our own favorite quotes. This one has to do with what you judge and what we are trying to do. He compared injustice to a boil. He said, like a boil that can never be cured unless it is opened up with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light,

so too injustice can never be cured. It can never be cured, and the exposure of it with all its friction needs to happen to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it could be cured. And of course, the same thing goes with truth. So what I see us doing here as being boil lancers, okay, we're gonna get out the ugliness, we're going to substitute the truth. The other thing that I remember from his wonderful letter from Birmingham City Jail was, here it comes, one sentence. There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular.

One must take it because it's right. Now, there are lots of politicians that are not speaking out against genocide, and I repeat the word genocide, in Gaza, and worse still, the church leaders. Now, he wrote that letter to the Birmingham City Jail to eight prominent church leaders who were saying, no, don't disrupt things, no, no, there's no such thing as good trouble here. Martin, you're a disruptor, and here's what he said to them. In the early days when Christians were willing to take risks, the church was not merely a thermometer reflecting public opinion. It was a thermostat that transformed the morals of society. Things are different now. Just one more sentence. Things are different now. So the contemporary church is the defender, arch defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanctions of things as they are, period, end quote. He's writing to church leaders here, black church leaders,

and he's hoping that he can stir them up and say, well, you know, this is not being faithful, not only to Christian tradition, but Jewish traditions and Muslim traditions as well, the Abrahamic tradition, where you care first and foremost about the widow, the orphan, the refugee. He wrote that 55, 60 years ago. It is brilliant.

It is gifted. When I was teaching legal philosophy at Brooklyn Law School, I made sure that that was included in the curriculum. It is also a defense, a great defense, of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, both of whom argued, as you know, that an unjust law is no law and there is no obligation to obey it. And an unjust law is one that violates natural rights or demeans humanity. He was a victim of both types of violations. The other thing I got to note is, I mean, what you just read is as relevant and valid a criticism of church leaders today about Gaza as it was 55 or 60 years ago

about the plight of African Americans in the United States. Last week when you and Larry were on with us, we did not have available to us a clip of all the arguments we wanted to show from the lawyers' presentations in the International Court of Justice. Alistair Crook informed us this morning that the South African arguments were not available on any media in the United States or in the West. You had to get them from Al Jazeera. Of course, the Israeli arguments were. So I want to play for you now one of these you've seen, but I want both these arguments fresh in your mind. What we're calling the second argument, Chris, this is the second lawyer who spoke in behalf of South Africa and embedded in that argument is our IDF troops dancing and

celebrating over the deaths of Gaza civilians. And then we'll play an argument by an Irish barrister, a female barrister, who makes a very, very, very compelling demonstration. And then we'll play an argument by a British barrister who's making the principal presentation for the Israelis. So first, the second argument, then the Irish female barrister, Chris, then the British male barrister. Watch this. On 7 December 2023, Israeli soldiers proved that they understood the prime minister's message to remember what the Amalek has done to you as genocider. They were recorded by journalists dancing and singing. We know our motto.

They are no uninvolved. That they obey one commandment to wipe off the seed of Amalek. The Prime Minister's invocation of Amalek is being used by soldiers to justify the killing of civilians, including children. These are the soldiers repeating the inciting words of their prime minister. There is an urgent need for provisional measures to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the irreparable prejudice caused by Israel's violations of the Genocide Convention. For children in particular, the last 12 weeks have been traumatic. No food, no water, no school,

nothing but the terrifying sounds of war day in and day out. Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence. While the world watches on. Turning to the court's case law, as the court has recently reaffirmed, and I quote, the condition of urgency is met when acts susceptible of causing irreparable prejudice can occur at any moment before the court makes a final decision on the case." That is precisely the situation here.

Any of those matters to which I have referred can and are occurring at any moment. United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding the immediate, safe, unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale throughout Gaza and full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access, end quote, remain unimplemented. United Nations General Assembly resolutions calling for a humanitarian ceasefire have been ignored. The situation could not be more urgent. Since these proceedings were

initiated on the 29th of December 2023 alone, an estimated over 1,252 injured. As to the criterion of irreparable prejudice, for decades now, the Court has repeatedly found it to be satisfied in situations where serious risks arise to human life or to other fundamental rights. In Qatar, United Arab Emirates, the court considered provisional measures to be justified having regard to the risk of irreparable prejudice deriving from factors such as people being forced to leave their places of residence without the possibility of return, the psychological distress of temporary or potentially ongoing separation from their families and the harm associated with students being prevented from taking their exams. If provisional measures were justified there, how could they not be in Gaza?

The State of Israel is singularly aware of why the Genocide Convention, which has been invoked in these proceedings, was adopted. Seared in our collective memory is the systematic murder of six million Jews as part of a premeditated and heinous program for their total annihilation. Given the Jewish people's history and its foundational texts, it is not surprising that Israel was among the first states to ratify the Genocide Convention without reservation and to incorporate its provisions in the Western world. The arguments went on for three, three and a half hours on Friday, opposing the South African application generally available everywhere in the West.

Is it a common belief in the intelligence community that the U.S. can manipulate this court? Well, yes. Any court or any U.N. body is a lucrative target for such manipulation. I just want to comment that Barrister Blinn's Irish heritage, well, let me just say that I applaud her sang-froid, her reticence, her calm way of delivering that because her grandparents and my grandparents were subjected to the same kind of cruel occupation, except they didn't kill us. They didn't kill us out of the country. I'm talking about my Irish ancestors, of course. How she could keep her composure in that set of circumstances is quite remarkable. She was arguably, I didn't see the whole thing. I saw clips of nearly all of remarkable. She was arguably, I didn't see the whole thing,

I saw clips of nearly all of them, she was arguably the most articulate of all the eight lawyers, four on each side, that addressed the court. But I want to ask you about the corruption of the court. I don't mean bribery type corruption, but I mean is there political corruption? Is there pressure on these judges? Because the court really issues what we would say in what we'd call in America an advisory opinion. They don't have an army to enforce their opinion. They can, their ruling, they can condemn the Israelis for genocide, and that's not going to move a hair on the head of Prime Minister Netanyahu, unless I'm misreading this right. Well, it will be a big deal, Judge. In other words, if Israel is made even more a pariah, and people follow through with economic measures that weaken Israel

and force it to buy more and more on the United States, that will be significant. You're right. It has no enforcement capability. And worse still, I don't know when the judgment's going to come down. No one does that I know of. Some people are saying, well, it should be quick. And, of course, Barrister Malini said, yeah, sure, it should be quick.

It's urgent, urgent. But, you know, there's all kinds of delaying tactics. You know better than I how many can be played. And I heard from my friend Ed Snowden via Twitter. And what he said was, you know, I worked in the CIA station under Bush and Cheney just down the street from the UN bodies in Geneva. And any chance we got, we surged our capability against their communications and everything else. So, you know, there's lots of room. I would be surprised, says Ed, if the U.S. station, their FBI, CIA, NSA are not surging their capability against all people having to do with the International Court of Justice, even though they meet in The Hague,

the headquarters is in Geneva. What would the, or could the CIA or the NSA do mechanically to influence the outcome or impede the work of the court? Well, there are what, about 15 judges there, right? How many of those have skeletons in their closet? How many of those would not like reveal some of the things that could easily be found out by these specialists in the covert action part of the CIA and the very, very, very sophisticated measures that the NSA employs abroad. Now, that's all fair game in terms of what the U.S. law allows abroad. But what impinges on an important case like this, you know, it's really, really irredeemably bad. And that's exactly what they tried before the war in Iraq. Remember, they're trying to get the Security Council to approve this war in Iraq, and they couldn't do it.

And so they surged their capability, the Brits and the United States, against all the members of the Security Council in that venue. And they still failed, but who knows how susceptible many of these judges would be. And I don't know, Judge, does it have to be unanimous? I don't know how this thing works with the International Court of Justice. No, it can be a vote of eight to seven. Good. That's good. So the court has 13 justices, but in a case like this, each of the countries involved can add a justice. So the Israelis added an 87-year-old former chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, interestingly, a notorious opponent of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the South Africans added a former justice of their Supreme Court. So eight to seven can do it. I think you're quite right, Ray, on both counts, that this will lend a lot of moral suasion throughout the world against the Israelis if the court rules that way.

And if they make their ruling just on the basis of the arguments, it's not even a close call. On the other hand, if the intelligence community wants to threaten these judges subtly, sort of the way it does to members of Congress to keep increasing the budgets of the intelligence community, it certainly knows how to do so. Is Israel in the PR war its own worst enemy? Well, you know, Judge, the first target for Israeli propaganda are Israeli citizens themselves, and they need precious little encouragement to be angry and to be ready and eager to wreak vengeance on the Hamas and all the Palestinians. Now with respect to its position abroad, well, let's face it. The Israeli influence, the lobby influence on our media is appreciable.

Now, you pointed out, I'll say it again, you want to talk about one-sided coverage? Well, Thursday session, nothing. Friday session, when the Israelis testify, everything. Now, hello, do you need more description for a one-sided coverage? So that's what we're facing in the United States. Now in the south of this world and elsewhere, of course, the Israelis are seen to be putting out this propaganda, but the places where it counts, like the United States, which is enabling, which is making this genocide possible, and most people think, well, Israel really suffered on October.

Didn't you see that Israeli case on Friday? And they will not have seen my Irish barrister favorite person on on thursday i mean it speaks for itself uh we'll play two more clips for you one is professor malcolm shaw who is the uh lead uh british well british barrister but the lead israeli lawyer and we'll talk about talk about that for a minute. And then we'll play you what the kids are taunting is Joe Genocide himself at a South Carolina church being interrupted by people who are outraged at American complicity in the genocide. So first, Professor Shor, then we'll talk about it, and then we'll play President Biden. South Africa casts its net widely. In its application, it uses the word

context many times. In particular, it declares that it is important to place the acts of genocide Mae'n bwysig rhoi'r acte o genesydd yn y cyd-destun fwyaf o ddysgu Israel tuag at y Pwysigion yn ystod ei ddiwedd o 75 mlynedd. Gan adael y gwirionedd anhygoel o'r ystadeg, pam na fyddwn yn parhau ar 75 mlynedd?r cyfarfod, ym 1922, a'r cyfrif gan y Cyngor y Llywodraeth o'r Mandat Gwladol neu'r gyfrif o'r Ddychlariad Balfour o 1917. Efallai hefyd y bydd y cyrraedd i'r ddynion Israel o'r triwyr Israel o hyd i 3,500 oed yn ôl. Nid yw. Y cyd-destun cyffredin a'r cyfnod ar gyfer y llygaid arbennig o genesyddion sydd wedi'u cynnig gan South Africa yw'r digwyddiadau o 7 Ogos, pan roedd ymdrinwyr Hamas a grwpiau aelodau eraill a phobl yn ystyrnu mass militants and other armed groups and individuals stormed into the internationally

recognized sovereign territory of Israel. He may be a very highly regarded professor and gifted lawyer, but international law says, and that court has ruled, that the motivation for the genocide is no defense to genocide whatsoever. This is why our colleague, Professor John Mearsheimer, who watched all the tapes, said that the Israeli team didn't even make a dent in the argument of the South African team. Do you think the United States is the unindicted co-conspirator here? Clearly it is. It's all but said explicitly in these documents.

A note on John Mearsheimer. I admire him greatly. And he was very, very cautious and reticent to use the word genocide until he read those 84 pages, right? Correct. It's the most case. Now, that fellow there with the wig, okay, I won't criticize his wig, okay? But I'll say that he's using a rhetorical device that you and I know, Judge. It's called reductio ad absurdum, okay?

You reduce things to the most absurd. You use these, well, you know, Socrates was convicted for doing precisely that, which he wasn't doing, but he was making the worst cause appear the better, right? And he was corrupting the youth. This guy is not corrupting the youth. He's corrupting the court or trying to. I think these members of the court can see right through. Reduxio ad absurdum. Here's President Biden in a South Carolina church and watch his reaction and behavior when the crowd

verbally overwhelms him. Without the truth, there's no light. Without light, there's no path from this darkness. If you really care about the lives lost here, then you should honor the lives lost in corporate ceasefire in Palestine. Cease fire now! Cease fire now! That's all right. That's all right. That's all right. I understand their passion. And I've been quietly working. I've been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza,

using all that I can to do that. Well, we know that's not true. All he has to do is make a phone call, and they'd be out of Gaza in 24 hours. That's exactly right. And to look at that as encouraging in a sense, that is to look at the crowd, they are making good trouble. OK, very much in the tradition of Dr. That is that is really a Ray McGovern phrase. Good trouble.

I don't know if you know this, Judge, but I had a chance to exercise good trouble when Bobby Kennedy came to my hometown, now Raleigh, North Carolina, on what was a Friday night. Okay, I interrupted his speech after a lull in the applause, and I said, Bobby, 20,000 Palestinian children killed. You're silent. I worked for your uncle. You're no JFK. Of course, they ushered me out. Now, on the way out, and this is the teaching point here, Judge, on the way out, about 80% of the people, his supporters went like this and said, I wish we, I would like to say that. You said it for us. Thank you very much. The other thing that was good, and for my purposes,

is that there was no Secret Service protection for Bobby, which you know has been refused to him. And so I was fully expecting to be handled in quite a different way than Bobby's people handled me. It was gentle. It was respectful. It was nonviolent. I'd like to get used to that next time around.

Ray, you're a great man. And thank you very much for all you do, for your time, for your courage, and for your analysis of all these problems. We'll see you again at the end of the week with your compadre, Larry Johnson. Thanks, Judge. Thank you. All the best. Coming up later today, Larry Johnson at 11, at 1.30, Colonel McGregor at 2.45, Bill O'Reilly. Yes, that Bill O'Reilly. And at 4 o'clock, Professor Mearsheimer. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm