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May 14, 2024 - Jim Fetzer
01:02:53
Meet Benjamin Netanyahu, Unconvicted War Criminal - James Corbett
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You have to hear this to believe this.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague is contemplating issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli government and military officials as war criminals.
This would be an outrage of historic proportions.
International bodies like the ICC arose in the wake of the Holocaust committed against the Jewish people.
They were set up to prevent such horrors, to prevent future genocides.
Yet now, the International Court is trying to put Israel in the dock.
It's trying to put us in the dark as we defend ourselves against genocidal terrorists and regimes, Iran of course, that openly works to destroy the one and only Jewish state.
Branding Israel's leaders and soldiers as war criminals will pour jet fuel on the fires of anti-Semitism, those fires that are already raging on the campuses of America and across capitals around the world.
It will also be the first time that a democratic country fighting for its life according to the rules of war is itself accused of war crimes.
Israel is not even subject to the court's jurisdiction and it has an independent legal system that rigorously investigates all violations of the law.
Rather, this ICC attempt is an attempt to paralyze Israel's very ability to defend itself.
The government and people of Israel reject outright this grave threat to our security, this grave threat to our very existence.
And I want to assure you, no ICC action will impact Israel's ironclad determination To achieve the goals of our war with Hamas terrorists.
We will destroy Hamas' military and governing capabilities in Gaza.
We will release all our hostages.
And we will ensure that Gaza never poses a threat to Israel again.
Israel expects the leaders of the free world to stand firmly against the ICC's outrageous assault on Israel's inherent right of self-defense.
We expect them to use all the means at their disposal to stop this dangerous move.
Six months after the terrible Hamas massacre of October 7th, 80 years after the horrors of the Holocaust, the Jewish state calls on decent people everywhere to reject this outrage by the ICC, to stand with Israel as we fight the barbarians of Hamas in Iran and as we work to secure a more peaceful world.
Uh-oh.
Looks like somebody's in trouble.
Or is he?
Yes, this is James Corbett of CorbettReport.com.
You are tuned into the Corbett Report podcast here in May of 2024, specifically episode 458 of aforesaid podcast.
Meet Benjamin Netanyahu, unconvicted war criminal.
And if you are the average Joe six-pack on the bottom rung of the propaganda pyramid, you might be a little bit aghast at the thought that the ICC is even considering bringing war crimes charges against senior Israeli military and political officials, including, of course, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu, for their conduct in the ongoing Holocaust against the Palestinian people.
Because presumably you get your information from sources like the New York Times, or the New York Post, or the Jerusalem Post, or the Washington Post, or any of the other posts.
Or perhaps you get your information about the biographical details of someone like Netanyahu from sources like Will there ever be a rainbow?
I mean, sorry, I mean, that's a different autobiography.
I mean, BB, my story, the officially sanctioned autobiography of Benjamin Netanyahu, which, by the way, I will confess, I have not subjected myself to, or just Regular old mainstream milquetoast pieces of propaganda like the resistible rise of Benjamin Netanyahu by Neil Laugherty, which is a piece of propaganda I have subjected myself to for the purposes of today's podcast.
Don't say I don't ever do anything for you guys.
So, why on earth would the ICC be considering, the International Criminal Court, be considering bringing war crimes charges against a poor innocent waif like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Well, let's start from the top and just make sure that we understand the situation.
And what better place to start than from the establishment prostitutes at ForeignPolicy.com, founded, of course, by Samuel Clash of Civilizations Huntington, and for a long time edited by David, David Mini-Kissinger-Rothkopf.
So, you know it's a trustworthy source.
Anyway, They had this article up recently.
Can the ICC actually arrest Netanyahu?
A former ICC president answers questions about the top court's jurisdiction in the Israel-Hamas war.
So, spoiler, TLDR, theoretically, yes, but fat chance that the U.S.
is going to allow it.
Anyway, let's start by just getting some details here.
In the weeks following Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel last year, the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the ICC, Karim Khan, repeatedly warned those engaged in the war to proceed with Extreme care, specifically cautioning against using starvation as a weapon of war.
Six months on, with Gaza experiencing a full-blown famine and more than 75% of its population displaced, the Israeli and international media are abuzz with news about the ICC potentially issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
All right.
Okay, fair enough.
So what does this mean?
And does the ICC have jurisdiction over Israeli nationals?
The ICC can prosecute nationals of a state that is party to the Rome Statute.
It can also prosecute crimes committed on the territory of a state that is party to the treaty, whether or not the defendant state is party to the Rome Statute.
Even though Israel is not a party to the treaty, Palestine is a member state.
Thus, the ICC can prosecute Israeli officials for complicity in crimes that Israel Defense Forces, IDF soldiers, allegedly committed on Palestinian territory.
Conversely, the court has jurisdiction over individual members of Hamas, as Palestinian nationals, for the international crimes they allegedly committed in Israel as well.
The same legal principle has been used in the case of Russia, which is not a party to the Rome Statute.
Statue?
Statute?
In 2022, a group of 39 countries including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom called on the ICC to investigate the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This resulted in the ICC issuing an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Remember that?
For committing war crimes on Ukrainian territory.
A move that was applauded by U.S.
President Joe Biden.
When he was informed what year it was and what was happening.
Thus, it would be contradictory for any of the states to accept the ICC's jurisdiction over Russian nationals.
But not those of Israel.
And we all know.
Hypocrisy?
No, certainly.
They would never think of being hypocritical about this.
Anyway.
Well, surprise, spoiler, none of this really matters.
As it goes on to say, it is regrettable that some states have been unwilling to support the court, notably in the execution of arrest warrants, when their friends and allies are concerned.
For example, many African and Middle Eastern governments such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jordan, Malawi, Nigeria, and South Africa failed to arrest former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, when he traveled to their countries.
This has left many of the court's arrest warrants unexecuted.
In some instances, member states such as Canada, Germany, Nigeria, and the UK have made public statements in support of their political allies in situations before the court, notwithstanding that such statements are purely political and tend to undermine the global perception of the court.
Indeed, Well, we wouldn't want to undermine the global perception of this austere court, would we?
Well, still, what are the actual charges?
I mean, what would they specifically be prosecuting for?
Well, the best I can come up with for you is from The Economist.
Yes, the Rothschild economist.
Could the International Criminal Court indict Benjamin Netanyahu?
Which goes on to say that as for the alleged crimes, Israeli legal officials suspect the ICC, they don't know, but they suspect the ICC is investigating the obstruction of humanitarian supplies into Gaza, which international aid organizations claim has brought parts of the enclave to famine.
The ICC could be considering an indictment on international starvation, a war crime.
It might be partly based on the statements of some Israeli ministers which suggested that Israel should impose a siege on Gaza and block all supplies to it in the wake of the October 7th attack.
All right.
So what do we know here?
Not very much, because at least at the time that I'm recording this, whatever charges may or may not be forthcoming or indictment may or may not be forthcoming hasn't been issued yet.
So we don't know what specifically is being investigated.
or what the Israeli, even which officials might be under indictment, etc., etc.
But, as already stated, number one, this is not going to happen.
Bibi has already recruited Uncle Sam to make sure, to step in and make sure that the ICC doesn't do anything else.
And there has already been threats of retaliation if they even think about bringing any war crimes charges.
I'll put the link in the show notes if you need documentation on that.
So number one, it's not going to happen.
But number two...
Would we even want the International Criminal Court to be the venue at which such charges are being laid?
Not only is the ICC an inherently corrupt kangaroo court that only exists or has only existed to this point to prosecute African warlords and the occasional other baddie on the U.S.
State Department hit list, like, say, Vladimir Putin, But it has done very little in terms of actually prosecuting real war crimes by, say, the Bushes or people like that.
But beyond that, it is an institution whose very purpose, its founding, its basic core precepts is to prop up the idea of a global judicial system that is going to be part of the cornerstone of a future proposed global governmental system.
So no, we do not really want to be giving power or energy to something like the International Criminal Court.
And the entire system of global government that it portends.
If you want more information about either of those two aspects of the court, its kangaroo court nature, I will direct you back to an editorial I wrote several years ago now on Victor's Justice, the truth about the International Criminal Court.
And if you want more about how the ICC fits into that greater international judicial system framework on the path towards global government, I would suggest you check out or re-familiarize yourself with episode 261 of this podcast on international law.
But having said that, okay, this particular story is almost certainly a nothing burger.
I am not holding my breath and waiting to see Bibi in an orange jumpsuit sitting there in front of the ICC judges.
I just don't see that happening as a real possibility.
But let us use this moment at least as a teachable moment.
It's an exercise in education, or possible education, for the average person who may be surprised that the ICC would even be considering such a move.
So let's just imagine there is a universe in which there is somebody that could, some body, some institution that could actually bring real war crimes charges with real teeth against someone like Benjamin Netanyahu and prosecute it to completion.
What would that look like?
What kinds of charges would be brought up?
For what reasons?
Who is Benjamin Netanyahu?
Well, that's what we're going to explore today, friends.
And I suppose this probably doesn't need to be told to the regular Corporate Report audience, but I will say it anyway.
You are not going to find the answer to that question, who is Benjamin Netanyahu, from the tight trite TikTok packaged biographical summaries that you'll find from the corporate prostitutes.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1949, Netanyahu spent several years during his youth living in the United States before returning to Israel at the age of 18 to join its military.
And he thrived in the military.
Netanyahu served as a captain of an elite commando unit called the Sayeret Matkal, after being recommended by one of its members.
His service ended in 1972, but that certainly wasn't the last time he would fight.
He moved back to the United States to study at MIT.
The death of his brother affected him immensely as the violent death of anyone's brother would.
But it also enlarged his sense of purpose.
The early 1990s saw Netanyahu's entry into Israeli politics as a member of the Likud party.
His rise within the party ranks was swift, and by 1996 he became the youngest person ever to be elected as the Prime Minister of Israel.
Yada, yada, yada, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
I'm sure you know by now how that sort of turgid, mainstream, high school essay-level hagiography goes by now, but if not, by all means, follow the links in the show notes to all of those sources, and you can explore from there to find other mainstream, rather dull presentations of Benjamin Netanyahu's life, but I trust that once you do so, you will come back to the exact same spot, asking the question, so who is Benjamin Netanyahu really?
Well, to answer that, let's go back to the beginning and...
And no, by the beginning, I don't mean the moment of his birth in Tel Aviv or anything of that sort.
No, I mean the beginning of the birth of his political career, not in Israel, but in the United States.
And as an American, political figure representing Israel in America, because I think that's highly pertinent to where a lot of Netanyahu's political base and support comes from, and how he got into the position of power that he did in Israeli politics was via the backdoor, in a sense, through American Television appearances, specifically.
I think there, of course, he was a figure that was featured in the 1980s.
He was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, etc.
So he had some experience in front of the cameras, and he had been a self-proclaimed expert on terrorism, founding his terror institute in the name of his brother after his brother's death, which we'll get into later.
But He had something of a presence, but it wasn't until precisely the evening of January 18th, 1991, which I'm sure you will recognize was the early hours of the beginning of the First Gulf War, There in 1991 as Saddam's Scud missiles were threatening Israel and you had those brave CNN reporters donning their gas masks to continue reporting from the front lines.
Well, there was a dramatic interview that was conducted by CNN correspondent Linda Scherzer of Benjamin Netanyahu that was conducted
Bizarrely enough, theatrically enough, in gas masks, just to really bring it home for the viewer just how dangerous the situation was, in which, well, Netanyahu very dramatically made some statements that really marked the beginning of his entry into the public consciousness in the United States and the world.
You were asked a little earlier, before the air raid started, what you expected Israel's response would be, what your reaction was to the President's comments earlier tonight, can you repeat them for us now?
I must say that this is the darnest way to conduct an interview, to borrow a phrase.
But of course what it does demonstrate, I think in a fairly dramatic way, is the kind of threat we're facing.
Now we would like to see that threat removed, and we will take the Actions that are necessary to remove it.
I cannot tell you when, I cannot tell you where, I cannot tell you how.
But we will make sure that Israel is safe.
Again Reid, as I mentioned earlier, it is quite difficult to speak through these masks.
The country has been advised, and we as well, to go into a sealed room, which we have prepared in our office.
I think that perhaps it might be a wise idea for us to do that now.
Riveting television indeed, and of course it did captivate the audiences of CNN, the credulous believers in the MSM there in January of 1991, and did catapult Benjamin Netanyahu from a rather low-level apparatchik in the Likud party there in Israel into a position of international prominence, which certainly helped in his rise to political prominence in Israel.
But let's back up the truck a little bit and find out a little bit more about the family history of Netanyahu, because I think it is pertinent to what we are studying today.
Well, as most biographies of Benjamin Netanyahu will start with, Benjamin Netanyahu was the son of Benzion.
Netanyahu, question mark?
Well, Netanyahu itself is a name that was adopted when the family Hebraized their name on their journey to Israel.
But at any rate, Benzion Netanyahu was Benjamin Netanyahu's father and someone notable and often mentioned in the Israel history books on his own right.
And we can get that, for example, from Something like this.
Likud's late grandfather from Tablet Mag.
It's the children of Irgun fighters who are known as princes of the Israeli right.
But Benzion Nedmiahu was a scholar, not an underground militant.
And this goes on to say that as a young immigrant living in the land of Israel, Benzion moved from Poland in 1920 at age 10.
He became involved with the militant revisionist Zionist movement of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, editing a series of revisionist newspapers during the 1930s and 1940s.
He also served as the private secretary to Jabotinsky during the movement leader's final years.
Benzion Netanyahu's affiliation with Jabotinsky certainly didn't make him popular in the Israel of the 1950s.
At that time, Israel was dominated by the Labor Party of David Ben-Gurion, and it wasn't a friendly environment for veterans of the revisionist movement and its various military undergrounds, like the Irgun.
But, uh, oh, you know, don't worry, guys.
Netanyahu's father, yeah, he was...
Kind of in that mix of these Urgoon militants and revisionists, Zionist extremists, but he was more of an academic.
He wasn't one of those guys, right?
But still, you know, Urgoon, Urgoon.
Where have I heard about the Urgun before?
After a bomb explosion caused by terrorists on the British headquarters of Jerusalem, one entire corner of the King David Hotel, a building of seven stories, was razed to the ground.
The stone floors were cut clean... In scenes eerily reminiscent of New York 55 years later, the Jerusalem bomb was the beginning of terrorism as a media event, designed to capture the world's attention.
The latest casualty list included 65 killed, 47 injured, The perpetrators, Zionist Jews.
Members of Manneken Begin's Irgun terrorist network.
Begin, who'd one day become Prime Minister of Israel, described this tactic as turning Palestine into a glass house, where the entire world was looking in.
I think it was one of these acts of violence that ahead of its time, I mean in an era before CNN, before instantaneous news, was choreographed precisely to attract international attention.
We were a minority, but we were a minority with a clear ideology.
That we must have a Jewish state, to rebuild the state.
Which was existing many, many hundreds of years ago.
The bombing of the King David Hotel was perhaps one of the most significant terrorist incidents of the 20th century.
For many decades, it actually held the infamous record of having killed the largest number of people.
In a fight for liberty, you have always those who are more, call them extreme, or more adamant, or call them staunch.
And they wanted Immediately.
Not to wait for the Messiah.
Oh, that's right.
That Ergun, Zionist paramilitary organization that explicitly and consciously used acts of deadly terrorism in their quest to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, and in the time of That attack on the King David Hotel in 1946, that organization was being led by Menachem Begin, future Israeli Prime Minister.
And, as was noted, the King David Hotel bombing stood for many decades with that grisly record of deadliest terrorist attack in the world.
So, the question has to be raised.
What does Benjamin Netanyahu, the founder of the Yonatan Institute, named after his slain older brother, which seeks to determine the roots of terrorism and explore the ways and means by which that threat can be stamped out, what does Benjamin Netanyahu have to say about Begin and his deadly terrorist legacy?
Surely he must condemn the acts of violence used in a struggle for freedom by an oppressed people against an oppressor, right?
So in many ways, Menachem Begin symbolized the essence of our struggle for liberty.
He fought for it.
He sacrificed for it.
He achieved it.
And it is our struggle to be a free people in our ancestral homeland.
that guided his life, and he serves as an emblem and as an example for future generations because the battle is never over.
Oh, of course.
Yes, in fact, it gets even more disgusting than that appreciation of bloodletting and terrorism, as even Haaretz documents in an interesting article from a few years ago on Zionism's terrorist heritage, which talks about Netanyahu's penchant for getting up and moralizing about those dastardly Palestinian terrorists.
But what Netanyahu did not say was that entire birthright trips could be built around the plaques and monuments which Israel has erected in recent years to honor the bombings and other terrorist killings committed by the members of the Irgun.
It talks about that, of course, the paradigmatic terror event of the founding of the State of Israel, the King David Hotel bombing in 1946, the 60th anniversary of which was celebrated in a big gala festival attended by none other than Benjamin Netanyahu.
At the two-day 60th anniversary event at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in 2006, Netanyahu joined IZL veterans and academics who sought to prove once and for all that the bombers and gunmen of Begin's IZL and of future Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's radical Lehigh Underground, which carried out high-level political assassinations, had been freedom fighters.
And not terrorists.
The climax of the 60th anniversary observance was the unveiling of a large plaque near the King David commemorating the bombing.
At the time, Simon MacDonald, the British ambassador to Israel, along with Consul General John Jenkins, wrote to the mayor of Jerusalem protesting the plaque.
We don't think it's right for an act of terrorism to be commemorated, they wrote.
The British embassy added that there is no credible evidence that any warning reached British authorities.
The text of the plaque was altered slightly.
But the monument remained.
And of course, Netanyahu was there to help unveil it.
Awesome!
Yes, this is exactly the type of person that...
Bibi Netanyahu really is.
But we are jumping the timeline here, because if we want to really start examining the criminality of Benjamin Netanyahu, we have to look way back in the past, well before his political career ever began, back when he was a lowly businessman in the United States.
Or so people thought.
Yes, if you read any mainstream biography of Benjamin Netanyahu, they will inevitably talk about his early life, the importance of his father, and his influence on the family, and of course,
The influence of his older brother, Benjamin's older brother, Yonatan, who has become a folklore hero in Israel state lore as an IDF fighter who fought in the Six-Day War, rose to prominence with a Medal of Distinguished Service, and was given command of one of the leading armored brigades in the Golan Heights.
Who ended up being the only Israeli military officer killed in the famed Operation Entebbe, a counter-terror mission in Uganda, which, in 1976, it was a huge success, really.
102 of the 106 hostages who had been kidnapped by Palestinian and German terrorists were freed by the valiant IDF, but Yonatan ended up being the only person killed, and as a result, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu created the Yonatan Institute to commemorate his brother and to work towards ending terrorism and blah blah blah.
What these biographies, however, won't tell you about that interesting time in Netanyahu's life there in the early 1970s is, oh, I don't know, his participation in a criminal Israeli nuclear smuggling ring in the United States.
In terms of the FBI uncovering a multi-node network, this one happened to be centered in California.
Milco was a company that was incorporated in 1972 by a man named Richard Kelly Smythe.
Who, when he was discovered sending 800 Krytrons, which are dual-use items that can be used to trigger nuclear weapons, when he was discovered doing that, he skipped bail in the mid-1980s and disappeared until he was picked up by Interpol in the early part of 2000.
And so the story is interesting and explosive because after multiple attempts at denials, we had a document released in which one of the key contacts that Smythe was meeting with to set up sales in Israel was none other than Benjamin Netanyahu, and so the document
Which I'm kind of holding up right here for the people who are on video, actually names Benjamin Netanyahu as being an employee of Heli Trading Company, which was the node in Israel that would receive Ministry of Defense requisitions that they would pass on to Milco.
And so the interesting thing about this, of course, is the high-profile nature of Benjamin Netanyahu, the fact that the smuggling ring ringleader has been identified as Arnon Milchan, a person any American knows for his movie productions such as a person any American knows for his movie productions such as Pretty Woman and other favorites, who is running this and who a recent book has named as being a top economic espionage spy for
Who worked under Benjamin Bloomberg and Raphael Eaton.
But the FBI document that we published on July 4 related to an antiwar.com story was really short and direct.
And its core focus was on the fact that in a period when Netanyahu was building himself up as a leader in the terrorism industry, hosting major conferences, having just returned from his studies in the United States, hosting major conferences having just returned from his studies in the United States, hosting major conferences in the Jonathan Netanyahu Terrorism Institute, named after his brother who was killed on the Here's a person who...
Uh, was supposed to be working as a furniture company executive and yet these documents, which are very credible because of what they were, which is testimony from Richard Kelly Smith after he was returned from his exile overseas and finally forced to serve a prison sentence.
These were the statements that he made to FBI agents Ah, but what's a little nuclear smuggling between frenemies, am I right?
him and wanted to know what the extent of the nuclear technology smuggling network was.
And boom, there's Benjamin Netanyahu.
But what's a little nuclear smuggling between frenemies?
Am I right?
OK, we could talk about that.
And if you are interested, I will, of course, direct you to the show notes for today's in depth exploration at CorbettReport.com slash Netanyahu, where you can find out more about those details and many others.
Or we could talk about the ongoing bribery and corruption charges against Benjamin Netanyahu that are still continuing to be pursued to this day.
Yes, if you don't know about Case 4000 and all of the implications of that, I will direct you to the previous work that James Evan Pallotto has done on that with myself over at New World Next Week.
You can even read about the latest updates on that, but that's not what we're talking about today.
We're not talking about the regular, everyday, run-of-the-mill criminality that defines the kakistocracy of every single nation-state on Earth, Israel, of course.
No, we're talking about crimes against humanity, war crimes, something much different, something presumably with much greater gravitas and much heavier implications.
So where do we go to learn more about this concept of War crimes.
Crimes against humanity.
Crimes against peace.
What does that mean?
Well, let's take it from the horse's mouth.
And in this case, we're going to talk about, of course, the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo trials.
Those examples of international exemplars of international justice that were set up after World War II explicitly so that we would not have
Victor's justice in the wake of World War II, like we had with the Versailles Treaty at the end of World War I. No, this was going to be a proper establishing in law, in the principles and guidelines for future generations of the proper rule of conduct on the international stage so that we will never again have crimes against peace, crimes against humanity taking place, or at least not in a way that they would not be prosecutable.
Right?
Well, okay, as conspiracy realists in the crowd will no doubt interject, yes, well, of course, the Tokyo trials in Nuremberg actually ended up being the paradigmatic examples of victor's justice and the most egregious kind, but that being pushed aside for the moment.
Let's just see.
These are the ideals, the principles that were espoused in international law that we know that will never be actually applied on an equal footing, and that the ICC or any other globalist institution is never actually going to wield.
But let's see what they are.
Let's look at the Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which established The jurisdiction of that court, which was presuming to rule over primarily the Japanese defendants at that time, and it's Article 5 notes, jurisdiction over persons and offenses.
The tribunal shall have the power to try and punish Far Eastern war criminals who as individuals or as members of organization, organizations?
Are charged with offenses which include crimes against peace.
The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility.
So, let's see if Benjamin Netanyahu may be guilty of any of these types of crimes.
Number one, crimes against peace.
Namely, the planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of a declared or undeclared war of aggression Or a war in violation of international law, treaties, agreements, or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.
Number two, conventional war crimes, namely violations of the laws or customs of war.
And number three, crimes against humanity, namely murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed before or during the war, Or persecutions on political or racial grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country, where perpetrated.
Leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes, Again, a very high-minded ideal.
Can you imagine if that was applied across the board and without thinking about the particular allegiance of any given person who is accused of such crimes?
Well, let's do that and see if that does apply to Benjamin Netanyahu.
So let's see.
Well, for example, we could turn to the
Waging of the illegal war of aggression of the United States in Iraq in 2003 which is quite widely recognized as an illegal war at this point and who was there cheerleading for that war and presumably then guilty of number one crimes against peace the planning preparation and initiation let alone the waging of a declared or undeclared war of aggression
So did Netanyahu have any role to play in the U.S.
illegal invasion of Iraq?
And I must be honest and fair.
This is not a court of law.
This is not a question of legalisms.
It's a question of a realistic assessment of a threat, a palpable threat to our common civilization.
There is no question whatsoever.
That Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons.
No question whatsoever.
And there is no question that once he acquires it, history shifts immediately.
If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.
The application of power is the most important thing in winning the war on terrorism.
If I had to say, what are the three principles of winning the war on terror?
It's like, what are the three principles of real estate?
The three L's?
Location, location, location.
The three principles of winning the war on terror are the three W's.
Winning, winning, and winning.
The more victories you amass, the easier the next victory becomes.
The first victory in Afghanistan makes the second victory in Iraq that much easier.
The second victory in Iraq will make the third victory that much easier too, but it may change the nature of achieving that victory.
It may be possible to have implosions taking place.
I don't guarantee it, Mr. Attorney, but I think it makes it more likely, and therefore I think the choice of Iraq is a good choice.
It's the right choice.
Initiation of a war of aggression?
Well, check there.
But how about the planning of that war?
Well, it's an interesting tidbit that will be known to viewers of the False Flags documentary, The Secret History of Al-Qaeda, available at corporatereport.com slash al-qaeda, all one word, that, in fact, the plan for toppling Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9-11, basically pinning the false flag events of September 11, 2001 on Saddam Hussein and using that as an excuse to topple the Iraqi regime.
That was really a plan that was forwarded over, not from the Project for a New American Century, which, as I'm sure people know by now, was that gaggle of neocons who from the time of the late 1990s onwards was calling for the toppling of Saddam Hussein, but
From a document called Clean Break, a strategy for securing, a new strategy for securing the realm, which was a policy planning document that was put together by a study group led by Richard Perle, involving Douglas Feith, David Wormser, and other people who would go on to become the core neocons infesting Bush's Pentagon, who took that plan, originally forwarded in the Clean Break document, and made it operational, and
Wait, who was that clean-bait-break document actually prepared for?
Oh, that's right!
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In 1996, a group of prominent neoconservatives, including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wormser, wrote a report for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Titled A Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the report urged Israel to shape its strategic environment by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria.
The way to do this, the report concluded, was to focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right, as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions.
In 1997, 25 prominent neocons, including 10 who would go on to serve in the Bush administration, and even Jeb Bush, the future president's brother, signed a statement of principles as the founding charter of a new think tank called the Project for the New American Century.
The statement called on then-President Clinton to reverse the defense spending cuts that marked the post-Cold War era and to increase defense spending significantly.
In 1998, the group followed up with an open letter to Clinton urging him to turn your administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power.
Surrounding himself with neocons on the campaign trail, and eventually installing those neocons in all of the key security positions in his cabinet, President George W. Bush wasted no time in making these regime change dreams a reality.
As Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill later revealed, at his first major National Security Council meeting, held just 10 days into the new administration, President Bush tasked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Hugh Shelton to begin preparing options for the use of U.S.
ground forces in the northern and southern no-fly zones in Iraq to support an insurgency to bring down the Saddam regime.
The second National Security Council meeting of the Bush administration, held two days later, also discussed regime change in Iraq, with one briefing document at the meeting marked secret and bearing the title, Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.
It was about Iraq.
It was about what we can do to change this regime.
Now everybody else thought that grew out of 9-11.
No.
But this book says it was day one of this administration.
Day one, these things were laid and sealed.
You know, come to think of it, maybe that's why Netanyahu was caught in the wake of 9/11 openly gloating about how the events of September 11, 2001 were great for Israel.
The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv has reported Israel's former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has publicly said the September 11th attacks have been good for Israel.
Netanyahu said, quote, we're benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq, end quote.
Netanyahu then reportedly said these events, quote, swung American public opinion in our Hmm.
I'll invite you to stew on that in your own time, but meanwhile, yes, okay, anyway, crimes against peace, yes, alright, checkmark.
But what did unconvicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu learn from the lessons of the Iraq War?
That it's wrong to call something preemptive self-defense as a way of masking the reality of an illegal war of aggression?
No.
That it's a sin to slaughter untold scores of men, women, and children, and to decimate a country, ruin its infrastructure, and set it on a path towards destruction in the interests of pursuing your own geopolitical objectives?
Hardly.
No, no, no, no, no.
No, the lesson that Netanyahu learned from all of that was that, hey, all of that's a really effective strategy.
And so he doubled Tripled and quadrupled down on that strategy in the ensuing years, in what became an escalating series of ever more cartoonish and outlandish presentations, essentially attempting to wag the U.S. dog into an illegal war of aggression against Iran. essentially attempting to wag the U.S. dog into an illegal If these are the facts, and they are, where should a red line be drawn?
A red line should be drawn right here.
A red line should be drawn right here.
Before, before Iran completes the second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb.
Ladies and gentlemen, history has placed us at a fateful crossroads.
We must now choose between two paths.
One path leads to a bad deal that will at best curtail Iran's nuclear ambitions for a while, but it will inexorably lead to a nuclear-armed Iran whose unbridled aggression will inevitably lead to war.
The second path, however difficult, could lead to a much better deal that would prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclearized Middle East, A few weeks ago, in a great intelligence achievement, Israel obtained half a ton of the material inside these vaults.
And here's what we got.
got 55,000 pages, another 55,000 files on 183 CDs.
Everything you're about to see is an exact copy of the original Iranian material.
Above all, Iran must face a credible nuclear threat.
As long as I'm Prime Minister of Israel, I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
There is doubtless much else to document in the ignoble history and career of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving Prime Minister.
But for the purposes of today's war crimes indictment, the most pertinent would be his behavior towards the Palestinian people.
And it's in that context that we can turn back to that charter for the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Far East, which noted crimes against humanity, namely Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed before or during the war or persecutions on political or racial grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the tribunal.
To note that as Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has overseen the expansion of the illegal settlements in the West Bank and the expansion of the apartheid state that Israel now documentably is.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank if re-elected next week.
The statement he made in an interview with an Israeli television channel marks a policy turnaround.
Netanyahu has promoted Jewish settlement expansion in his four terms as Prime Minister, but until now he's refrained from presenting plans for the future of the West Bank settlements, which are widely considered illegal under international law.
The Israeli government's ambition for the Palestinian territories comes as no surprise to Hafez Harini.
This Bedouin's farm is in Masaf Yata, the West Bank.
The Israeli government's ambition for the Palestinian territories comes as no surprise to Hafez Harani.
This Bedouin's farm is in Masafiyata, the West Bank, on the edge of the Negev Desert and on the front line of an Israeli land grab for years now.
- Salud! - Salud!
The 7th of October attacks turbocharged that process.
We've been filming with the Hurenis over the course of the last 14 months.
Watched an empowered group of settlers next door move away from sticks and stones to assault rifles.
The Herani's cousin shot in the stomach.
The family and what's left of their farm now staring down the barrel of the gun.
Military checkpoints, Jewish-only roads and towns, color-coded ID cards, and a separate set of laws for Palestinians and Israelis.
This is the reality of life for millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control.
From the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel and the Gaza Strip, Palestinians are living under a system of laws and rules that discriminate against them based on one principal factor, the fact that they are Palestinian.
This morning, a top former Israeli general went on national radio in Israel to say there has been absolute apartheid in the occupied West Bank for the past 57 years, and even compared the situation there with Nazi Germany.
And writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week, South African-born Jewish journalist Benjamin Pogron said that he had spent years arguing with all my might against the accusation that Israel is an apartheid state.
However, the accusation is becoming fact.
As every day sees government ministers and their allies venting racism and following up with discriminatory actions.
I have to ask you, though, because we're sitting here talking and we're listening.
Yeah, I'm listening.
I hope you are listening.
Which is a reminder, I think, of the people who live here, but also the people who live in Gaza.
What happens to them in this vision of this new settlement with Jewish settlers, even in Gaza City?
What I think about Gaza?
The Arabs of Gaza lost the right to be in Gaza on the 7th of October.
Yes, I do hear the mosque, I do hear the prayer.
Things were different until the 7th of October.
No Arab, I'm speaking about more than 2 million Arabs, they will not stay there.
We, Jews, will be in Gaza.
That sounds like ethnic cleansing.
Palestinians and settlers live sometimes just a few meters away from one another.
And yet, their lives are completely different.
Palestinians live under military rule.
Some of their most basic rights are systematically violated and they can be held indefinitely, without trial or charge.
Their complaints of settler violence are rarely taken seriously or even investigated.
And that's why we're taking you to the village of Qusra, where Palestinians are surrounded by some of the most violent settlers.
Just days into Israel's war on Gaza, settlers here killed six Palestinians in 24 hours.
63-year-old Ibrahim Wadi and his 25-year-old son, Ahmed, were gunned down during a funeral service for the other victims.
They got stopped here on the main road by settlers.
who intercepted the funeral procession and both Ibrahim and Ahmed were shot dead here.
After a few months, they took the funeral procession and asked the police to take the fire to the distance of a zero meter.
I was surprised that this was the biggest concern for me.
I was scared.
As disgusting, as egregious, as fundamentally disturbing as these wanton acts of inhumanity against the Palestinian people are, it needs to be reiterated that not only are the people who individually are performing those actions obviously it needs to be reiterated that not only are the people who individually are performing those actions obviously legally accountable for those
Leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any person in execution of such plan.
Well, as disturbing, as disgusting as those actions are, it's only the thin edge of a very large wedge presided over by the instigator, planner, formulator of those actions, Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
And that is where we broach the other broad category of crime that falls under the purview of these international military tribunals, so-called conventional war crimes.
A misnomer, of course, because there's nothing conventional about these crimes at all.
They are fundamentally sickening.
Now, we could look at many examples of conventional war crimes that have taken place Under the stewardship of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his many, many years in office.
But let's look, for example, at the 2014 Operation Protective Edge announced by Netanyahu, which, unlike previous examples of Israeli military incursions and war crimes committed against occupied Palestine,
Actually started to get attention even in the controlled corporate media even in the United States let alone elsewhere in the Western world For the absolute wanton criminality of the acts that were being performed in the waging of that war Today we expanded our operations against Hamas and the other terrorist groups in Gaza We'll continue to protect our civilians against Hamas attacks on them Now, Hamas, by contrast, is deliberately putting Palestinian civilians into harm's way.
It embeds its terrorists in hospitals and schools and mosques, apartment buildings throughout the Gaza Strip.
Hamas is thus committing a double war crime.
It targets Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians.
This operation could take time.
We're resolved to defend our families and our homes.
Well, just a little while ago, Israel announced the name for this operation.
It's calling it Operation Protective Edge.
And immediately after that announcement was made, there were two airstrikes on Gaza, one down near the Egyptian border and one in central Gaza.
Now, our sources in Gaza tell us these are houses Probably belonging to militant leaders and this represents something of a change of tactics until now Israel has been striking areas where Missiles were being launched from or facilities training facilities and whatnot belonging to Hamas and other militant groups So really these are just the opening salvos when Israel gives a name to an operation It means that it's serious
Some of the bravest victims of the conflict between Israel and Hamas are Gaza's children.
The territory is young.
About 40% of the population is under 15.
That means many of the strikes have hit people like Ahmed Bousleh, who is only 8.
He was standing with his family waiting to be evacuated by bus out of a UN shelter that was under attack when an explosion hit the courtyard.
This is one of many cases Palestinians want the UN to investigate.
International activists searching for the dead and the wounded during a brief ceasefire.
In the green t-shirt, a 22-year-old local man, Salim Shamali, looking for relatives.
A shot rings out, apparently from an Israeli sniper.
Salim was hit, but was still calling out, still alive.
After two more shots, he was dead.
Three weeks of fighting have left at least 1,400 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians.
One of the latest casualties, a Palestinian baby girl born Monday after her mother was killed.
The child did not survive.
Israel says 56 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed.
Today, the Israeli Defense Force has again released footage purporting to show airstrikes aborted due to the proximity of children and other civilians.
But for all their boasts of humanitarian bombing, children and civilians comprise the vast majority of the 200 killed and 1,400 injured here in just nine injured here in just nine days.
It was then we learned that a third shell had killed four children minutes later, just down the beach.
Two still grabs from CCTV appear to show the four boys playing football and then the shell strikes.
But all of this, all of the documented criminality that took place under the authority of Benjamin Netanyahu only serves as background, as context for the main indictment against Benjamin Netanyahu, his participation in the Holocaust that is taking place in Gaza as we speak.
October 7 testimonies reveal Israel's military shelling Israeli citizens.
This big time report from thegrayzone.com.
Israel's military received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases as they were overwhelmed by Hamas militants on October 7th.
How many Israeli citizens said to have been burned alive were actually killed by so-called friendly fire.
Several new testimony by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to the growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen.
Tuval Eskapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be'iri, set up a hotline to coordinate between Kibbutz residents and the Israeli army.
He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that his desperation began to set in, quote, the commanders in the field made difficult decisions, including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages, end quote.
Thursday's attack has been described as a massacre of civilians.
Hundreds of starving Palestinians had gathered to collect food aid when they were attacked.
Israel's army says its soldiers were forced to open fire because they felt threatened by the crowds.
A major story overseas tonight, the deadly Israeli airstrike killing seven aid workers delivering food to Gaza.
One of the workers, a U.S.
citizen.
You will see the images here tonight, what was left behind.
You can actually see the convoy clearly marked.
It was struck three times.
They had alerted the Israelis beforehand.
The White House tonight saying it is outraged.
Prime Minister Netanyahu calling it unintentional, saying it happens in war.
They cite specific instances, including one that the report itself cites.
There you see, on the Jabalia refugee camp in October, the report says it killed dozens of children and wounded hundreds as an example of a violation of international humanitarian law.
The argument there is that Israel should face consequences, says Charles Blaha, who's a former career Foreign Service officer who worked in the State Department's office that monitors if countries comply with international humanitarian law.
What have they done to deserve this?
A woman cries out as people gather around those who died following an Israeli airstrike on a camp in central Gaza.
Where the grief and heartache is palpable.
Enough!
Find a solution for us, this man says, surrounded by the ruins of his neighborhood.
High above the nearly unnavigable landscape of this war-torn region, more aid is being dropped down in hopes of saving people from starvation, few as that may be.
We must act now before it is too late.
While several hundred aid trucks were allowed into Gaza on Wednesday, aid organizations say a growing number of infants are on the brink of death as their tiny bodies struggle to function.
Now all of this, this orgy of evidence that we have been looking at today, is still only scratching the surface of the criminality of the Netanyahu regime.
But I trust that it at least goes some way towards answering that question.
But why would the ICC indict poor old Bibi Netanyahu?
As always, I exhort you not to listen to me or anyone else or take anyone's word for any of this.
All of the sources, all of the documents, all of the videos, everything that I have cited today will be in the show notes at CorbettReport.com slash Netanyahu.
So the ball is now in your court to start engaging with this material and come into your own conclusions about the guilt of someone like Benjamin Netanyahu.
He certainly isn't the only unindicted war criminal in the world, but he is one of them.
That's going to do it for today's exploration.
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