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Aug. 21, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:39
AMB Charles Freeman : Will Zionists Destroy Israel?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, August 22nd, 2024.
Ambassador Charles Freeman will be here with us in just a moment on Is Netanyahu Himself Destroying Israel?
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Ambassador Freeman, welcome here, my dear friend.
I want to spend some time exploring your views and your understanding of the perilous state that Israel is in today.
But before we do, I have to prevail upon your expertise as a former Deputy Secretary of Defense.
What is your take on the incursion?
I'm going to call it an incursion.
Because we don't exactly know who was there, but you may have a better idea than I, of Ukrainians' soldiers into Russia in Kortsk.
Well, there's mounting evidence, in fact, that the British encouraged and cooperated with Ukraine in planning this incursion, presumably to cause the United States to escalate against Russia still further since we have been.
Somewhat cautious about authorizing the Ukrainians to use weaponry to fire deep into Russia.
The Ukrainian motive in doing this is pretty clear.
They're in desperate condition.
This, first of all, was a major boost to their morale.
It's been misportrayed in our press as a triumph of Ukraine.
We will see.
It is also a move by them to Please us and others who support them abroad because we are hurting Russia, which is the whole objective that we've been pursuing.
And it's also in connection with negotiations that were apparently about to start between Russia and Ukraine.
It was a move to take territory that they could use to bargain for the return of the territories Russia has taken from them.
Unfortunately, I think it's very unlikely that very many of these Ukrainians who have gone into Russia, who are the best in their army, pulled off the Donetsk Front, where the Russians are now steadily advancing.
I think very few of them are likely to get out of there alive.
Was this a NATO invasion of Russia?
Well, certainly it's being portrayed as such.
In Russia, by the Russians.
And there are ample reports of the presence of soldiers from various NATO countries, including the United States, France, others, Poland.
And, of course, there are also American journalists, apparently, embedded with these troops.
So you can't simply dismiss the Russian assertion that this is not just a Ukrainian, but actually a NATO.
Do you agree with our friend and colleague Larry Johnson, who basically says, I'm summarizing his position here for you if you have not heard him say it, because there was American weaponry and American ammunition and American technicians,
and certainly this could only have been done Well, it's not a direct invasion, but I think Larry Johnson's correct.
We are complicit to the extent that we have become a belligerent, an open belligerent with Russia.
Russia has a great sensitivity to being invaded.
It's been invaded by the Mongols, by the French, by the Germans, and in fact, people forget it was invaded by us back in 1918 to try to intervene against the Bolshevik Revolution.
That didn't work out well, and I suspect the Ukrainian incursion isn't going to work out very well for Ukraine either.
From your experience as a Deputy Secretary of Defense, Is it likely that the Pentagon was consulted before and during this incursion, particularly if American human beings were on the ground?
I say human beings because we don't know if they were CIA agents, outside contractors, soldiers of fortune, or even American military in Ukrainian military uniforms, which is another legal issue.
But before we even...
Would the DOD have been consulted?
Well, I was actually an Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, not the Deputy Secretary.
But I think I have to take at face value the Defense Department's statements that it was not consulted and not involved initially, at least directly.
I think you're right to suggest that America, or Larry Johnson is right, To suggest that elements of the American intelligence apparatus had to have been involved.
But I don't think they had the authority to do that from the Pentagon.
And this is where the alleged British involvement in planning and launching this incursion comes in.
Because if the British actually did that, then their purpose must have been To manipulate the United States into our own escalation.
To follow them in removing controls on the Ukrainian use of weaponry to fire deep into Russia.
Of course, the concern that we have had, which is not ill-founded, is that pushed far enough against the wall, or feeling cornered, the Russians will counter-escalate to the nuclear level.
Which Mr. Putin has actually talked about on a number of occasions.
For the moment, however, the reaction of the Russians to our involvement with Ukrainian strikes on their territory has been limited to arming the enemies of the United States wherever they are.
That includes signing up North Korea, which had been an international outlaw.
Now it has a patron.
And it involves, apparently, a discussion of sending weapons to various non-state actors or semi-state actors, like the Houthis.
And it certainly involves arming Iran.
That is, electronic warfare equipment, air defense equipment, and so forth, and possibly other things.
I went along with Sergei Shoigu, the National Security Advisor.
So, in effect, we opened Pandora's box.
Russia thought that an appropriate proportional response to our involvement in attacks on it would be to enable attacks on us.
Are you surprised by President Putin's restraint, notwithstanding pressures on him from those in Russia?
Mr. Putin is a rational thinker, very cold-blooded in his calculations of things.
I think there is a ridiculous set of conjectures in our press that somehow or other the embarrassment of an invasion of Russian territory will have weakened I suspect this has bolstered his position in Russian politics,
rallied the Russian people behind him and against NATO and the United States.
So Mr. Putin has been restrained out of careful calculations of the risks to Russia of the Further escalation.
So far, he's gotten away with arming our enemies in other places.
He does not want to go to the nuclear level, even if we're pushing him toward that.
And even if, as you say, there are voices in Russia, hardliners, who argue for such a response.
Here's what President Putin said just four days ago, Sunday afternoon on August 18. Chris, cut number four.
It appears that the enemy, with the help of the Western masters, is fulfilling their will, and the West is fighting us with the hands of the Ukrainians, so looks like the enemy seeks to improve its negotiating positions in the future.
Have you ever heard him refer to the United States and Great Britain and NATO as Ukraine's Western masters?
Well, there's a lot of reason to believe that much of this It's powered by us and directed by us.
I won't go into all the history, but remember, Mr. Zelensky is an actor.
It turns out he's a very effective one in the role of the champion of Ukrainian hardline nationalism.
But a lot of the lines he's speaking seem to have been written in London or New York or Washington.
So I think the interesting thing there was Mr. Putin's mention of negotiations, because separately, Sergei Lavrov, the very able foreign minister of Russia, has said, well, it's impossible to have negotiations under circumstances where the Ukrainians appear to be preparing negotiations and use that to deceive Russia in order to make a surprise attack on Russian territory.
I think we will have to wait until But every war must end, and wars typically end in a negotiation.
The United States has a very peculiar notion of war, born of our civil war, World War I, and World War II, and perhaps the Cold War as well, in which...
This is not how wars end.
They end in a negotiation that adjusts the behavior of the parties to reflect what has happened on the battlefield.
And that is how this war in Ukraine will end.
When it will end, we don't know.
Switching to Israel and Gaza, our friend and colleague Alistair Crook opines that Israeli society is generally split between what he calls revisionist Zionists led by Smotrich and Ben-Gavir and cultural Zionists who are the former Well,
I think the liberal, secular Jewish population in Israel is now mostly emigrated and is not there.
Mr. Netanyahu does indeed represent a form of Zionism, which is the negation of Judaism, which is a religion.
Transnational religion and no nationality prior to the creation of Zionism.
It's a religion like Catholicism, Lutheranism, Islam, or whatever.
In Israel, it's become the negation of the humane values that inspired our Christian religion.
And it is basically sociopathic.
Mr. Netanyahu personally, I think, is a sociopath.
A lot of Israelis have criticized him essentially for that.
And unfortunately, he fits into the larger context that Alistair Crook outlined.
How can a society long survive that supports rape?
Well, as I've said before, the original question Israelis insisted upon was that we accept their right to exist, we endorse their right to exist.
That, of course, was coded language for no one else has the right to exist between the river and the sea, and therefore there can be no Palestinian self-determination.
Israel's behavior in Gaza then changed the question.
Does Israel deserve to exist?
And I think now it's changed again.
And people are asking, can we tolerate a society like this that is so sadistic, so murderous, so indifferent to international law and human decency?
And much of the world is...
We are not.
In the United States, we remain devoted to Israel for complex reasons.
And there are some European countries that remain devoted to it.
But elsewhere, Israel is regarded as not just as a pariah, but as a criminal.
Do you accept the view?
That Prime Minister Netanyahu does not want a ceasefire, will never agree to one.
And if he puts something on the table, he knows Hamas will reject it.
And if Hamas puts something on the table, no matter what it is, he'll add to the conditions and the demands from the Israeli side.
Well, it's very clear he has applied the tenable directive to Israeli hostages.
He's written them off.
He doesn't have any interest in that.
The negotiations, of course, have been portrayed as focused on the hostage release issue.
And since that is really of no interest to Netanyahu, he's been very clear he intends to exterminate Hamas.
Now, when he says Hamas and when the fascists around him use that word, they are referring, in fact, to any and all Palestinians who refuse to accept Jewish supremacy.
It is a synonym for Palestinian nationalism.
And so when he says he's going to exterminate, annihilate Hamas, he's talking about annihilating the other people who live in Palestine, Palestinians.
So there's absolutely no reason to believe that he has been negotiating seriously.
And in fact, here I will make a comment reflecting observation of the So-called peace process, probably the longest-running fraud in diplomacy that has ever been conducted, it has set a pattern for our dealings with Israel and the Palestinians.
Basically, the United States formulates a proposal, takes it to Israel, negotiates with Israel, which then demands concessions, which we make.
We then take that proposal to the Palestinians.
And say that we might be able to get Israeli approval for it.
And we present it as our proposal, although it's already more Israeli than American.
Palestinians are obviously not enchanted by this, especially because they know that if they do accept it, Israel will just add additional conditions.
And that is exactly the process that has been unfolding with Secretary of State Blinken and the Israelis.
He goes to Israel.
He has a proposal, which he then attributes to the Israelis now, properly because it basically reflects Israeli interests, not American or international interests.
He presents that to Hamas.
They accept it.
That's what they did on July 2nd.
And then Israel adds additional conditions, which it has done.
This is not a serious approach to reaching an agreement.
It is a serious approach to preventing one.
And that is exactly what Mr. Netanyahu has been up to.
You forgot one thing, Ambassador.
He murdered the chief negotiator on the other side.
Yes, absolutely.
Further unrefutable proof of what I just said.
And this is part of a pattern, too, I might say.
Every single Palestinian leader who has had the capacity to do a deal with Israel, to make peace, Has been murdered by the Israelis.
This enables them to say, well, there's nobody to talk to.
Gee, did we have something to do with that?
A former director of Mossad recently said Israel is, quote, a racist and violent state that cannot survive.
Do you agree?
I think it's pushing the envelope at the moment.
Netanyahu and the other Yahu's around him have led Israel into the abyss, and they don't have a plan to get out.
And I think now we have to remember previous examples of societies that never made peace, Israel's never made a peace proposal, it has never proposed peaceful coexistence with either the Palestinians, and it has not pursued peaceful coexistence with its neighbors.
all of whom it has either intimidated with our help often, or bombed, strafed, and conducted assassinations on their territory.
So this is a society that is, that in many ways might remind you of the two crusader kingdoms established in Palestine in the Middle Ages, just before the Renaissance, both of which, So there's a precedent.
And I remember the words of a very wise, very intelligent Israeli senior politician many years ago when I was discussing peace with him, and he said, we should remember the fate of the Arabs in Spain.
They were there for 800 years.
They failed to make peace with the troublesome Christian kingdoms to the north.
And they were internally divided and quarrelsome.
They did not make peace when they were strong, and when they were weak, after 800 years, they were expelled.
In 1492, Christians in Spain expelled both Muslims and Jews.
Jews found home in Muslim countries, as well as elsewhere in Europe.
But this was a tragedy that could have been avoided.
His point was, you make peace when you're strong, when you're at the end of your rope, and that's where Israel is now.
What is the state of the relationship between Israeli civilian leadership and the IDF?
Are they still publicly adverse to each other?
Yes, they're fractious.
They are.
Disputing each other's positions.
The IDF basically, I think, very intelligently says there's no evidence Mr. Netanyahu has a strategy for ending this war.
That's probably because it isn't a war.
It's an extermination campaign.
Mr. Netanyahu says, you know, the military are not prepared to carry this out to the final conclusion, the final solution to the Palestinian problem in Gaza.
And they also resist the idea of escalating against Hezbollah, which some people in the Netanyahu cabinet are eager to do.
The military judgment, which I think is correct, is that if Israel did do the things that extremists in the cabinet are arguing for, it would put its very existence in peril.
Is Netanyahu in danger of a military coup?
We had a statement from Ehud Barak, the former prime minister before that.
He was chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, basically calling for the ouster of Netanyahu.
He's not alone in this.
That can't be ruled out.
You know, at the moment, Israeli society is divided every which way.
You asked about the cabinet versus the military.
You could also say the intelligence services are at odds with the cabinet.
The ultra-Orthodox are at odds with the government and its plans to conscript it.
Ordinary Israelis are at odds with the government about its efforts to deprive the judiciary of independence.
displaced Israelis, of whom their couple of hundred thousand, are at odds with the government about the failure to enable them to return to their home.
Who supports the government?
Almost nobody at this point.
What is supporting the government is Netanyahu's calculation that killing Palestinians is good politics.
And that is all.
I started to say that hostage families have grievances against Netanyahu, which are quite openly expressed.
So we have the paradox, you know, Israeli Jewish society has been and remains in many ways democratic.
Of course, that Israeli democracy is exercising the tyranny over the non-Israelis, the Palestinians, and relegating Arab Israelis to second-class status.
This is a very unattractive arrangement.
Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much for your time and for your support.
Deeply and profoundly appreciated.
I hope you can come back and join us again next week.
I hope so, too.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Coming up later today at 2 o 'clock Eastern, Scott Ritter.
At 3 o 'clock Eastern, Professor John Mearsheimer.
At 4 o 'clock Eastern, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
As I speak, it's Thursday.
On Thursdays, I post my column at JudsNap.com.
Take a look at it.
This week, it's called The Right to Be Left Alone.
Guaranteed to you under the Fourth Amendment.
But the government couldn't care less about it.
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