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Aug. 26, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
29:41
Matt Hoh: Will Israel Soon Stand Alone?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, August 27th, 2024.
Matt Ho will be here with us in just a moment on Is Israel Losing the Propaganda War?
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Matt Ho, welcome back to the show, my dear friend.
Thank you, as always, for your time.
I want to discuss at some length with you your views on whether Israel is winning or losing the propaganda war.
But before we do, the events in Kurtsk seem to be unraveling almost as we speak.
What is your take on the latest there?
My understanding of the latest is Does this make sense from your understanding of the way the Kremlin works?
It makes sense, Judge, and thanks for having me back on in my understanding of the various camps that are within the Ukrainian government that are also, you know, reflect the camps within the American and British governments of this idea that on a rational level, taking someone else's territory and then holding it in exchange for your own territory back during negotiations sounds ridiculous.
That sounds like no one should have any trouble understanding that, except that's not the reality of this.
There's no rationality going on here.
And what I really do believe, and others have said this as well, is that the effect of this incursion into Russia was entirely political.
It was a political stunt.
to reinforce support for Ukraine in the West.
Of course, it was important to try and jack up Ukrainian morale.
There are probably some folks out there who believe this is somehow going to affect the Russians.
Remember, there's this whole mindset, this whole narrative that dominated American policy towards Ukraine, that if we suck Russia into this war in Ukraine, This will cause such stress on Russia that there'll be an internal collapse and there'll be re- So there's probably some folks out there who actually did believe that if we do this, and this is what Western media was saying for a couple weeks, how embarrassed Putin was.
It shows how weak Putin is.
And Putin has taken this in the most nonchalant manner of probably any leader who's ever had his territory invaded.
But the purpose was for the West.
It was to reinforce There had to have been those who are astute enough and smart enough in Kyiv, in London, in Washington, in Brussels.
Who understood that the result was going to be the Russians' pull out of negotiations.
So you can see this as a deliberate attempt to scuttle negotiations to keep the war going on.
I think one of the big things that happens is that Joe Biden drops out of the race.
And now it's no longer entirely clear.
It's not certain that Donald Trump is going to win, especially if you look at the polls.
I know we've got a long way to go.
But looking at that then, I think you go back a month.
And Ukrainians are saying to themselves, look, either maybe we negotiate a deal now, or we take whatever deal is handed to us when Donald Trump comes into office.
Now it's not entirely clear that Donald Trump is going to run away with this race.
So maybe we can keep this war going.
We keep this war going.
It keeps us in power.
And for those in the West, for NATO, of course, keeping our going is it gives them their entire purpose, their entire power.
We've said it before.
It's like Jerusalem for them.
They're going to have to take back the Donbass at some point, take back Crimea.
So it's the political aspects of this, I think, is what really drives this in a way, in a manner that is greater than maybe anything else we have seen so far in this war in terms of how something was just so much a political stunt.
And it's effective.
It's having the results, I think, that were intended.
Chris, if you could pop up that article from Politico.
This is from last Thursday or Friday in Politico.
And I'll just read it out for people who are listening.
Headline in Politico.
And this summarizes the intended effect of this political stunt, of this demonstration.
So Politico writes, To press Biden on lifting weapons restrictions.
And then the first paragraph is, Ukraine's invasion of Russia has flipped the gloomy narrative on the war.
And Kiev is using its battlefield success to launch a new pressure campaign on the U.S. to lift the last restrictions on the use of long-range weapons inside Russia.
And you can find this article, this narrative, this messaging.
You know, I want to talk to you about propaganda and Israel, but look at the propaganda and Ukraine.
This is over the top.
But to throw some cold water on what they said, here's the adult in the room, Sergei Lavrov, two hours ago, Matt, on a clip that we call the West is looking for trouble.
The West does not want to avoid escalation.
The West, how we say in Russia, is looking for trouble.
It is very important to understand that we have our own doctrine, including doctrine on the use of nuclear weapon, which, by the way, has been adjusted now.
And American representatives are well aware about it.
You know what Foreign Minister Lavrov means, Matt, when he says the...
It's a scary thing to consider, particularly in light that there is a report out last week by David Sanger in the New York Times where the United States has adjusted its nuclear weapons posture to reflect the possibility of fighting three simultaneous nuclear wars, which of course- It's absolutely madness, right?
This idea that we fight a nuclear war with Russia, China, and North Korea, either in parallel or concurrently or in any fashion.
It's madness.
It's madness that doesn't, it's not, it's not as historical, though.
We've seen this before.
You know, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Joint Chiefs, if we had gone to a nuclear war with Russia, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Joint Chiefs, they were adamant that we also had to bomb China at the same time.
Right?
I mean, so this madness, this insanity, this irrationality is pervasive.
I heard you talking to Pepe just for a little bit before I came on, and he talked about how in Ukraine they are talking about taking St. Petersburg, they're talking about attacking Moscow, things like that.
Just this, again, this madness, this irrationality, this insanity.
And I've seen that in my own life.
And when I got to Baghdad and I was on a State Department team in 2004, I got there early May of 2004, so more than a year after the invasion, things were going not well.
The insurgency was blossoming, to put it simply.
And still, in Baghdad, at the American headquarters, at that time it was called the Coalition Provisional Authority, you still had a majority of the people within that government.
They all learned English, and they all went along with us, right?
It's just a matter of time.
This insurgency thing was no big deal.
The press is making out to be bigger than it actually is, right?
I mean, and then you would hear people judge.
This is, again, May of 2004, saying things like the real question we have to consider.
Do we go right or left?
Meaning, do we go into Iran or into Syria next?
So this madness, this fever that exists among these people in power when they are at war, and particularly when they are desperate, when they know that their entire fortunes, not only their legacy, but their future, depends upon keeping the war going, they will say anything, they'll do anything, and more importantly, they'll believe anything.
And I think that's what you're seeing with the Russians saying at this point in time, look, we understand this madness that we're confronted with.
We see this.
We see Ukraine sending drones to attack nuclear power plants.
How else can we handle this?
So we have to adjust, and we're not certain what that means, but they're informing us.
They're trying to talk to us and trying to get us to back down, to pull away, to not drive us right over the cliff.
The problem is the U.S. is in charge.
And in this game of chicken, Judge, right, this game of chicken that we're in here with Russia, the issue is that the thing that should scare everyone is that, yeah, we're taking a part in a game of chicken, but we're not the ones in the car.
The Ukrainians and the Europeans are.
So you've got people like Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken who are happy to play chicken with Russia because we're not at risk, according to them.
And this is what the Russians are reacting to.
In modern warfare, Has propaganda become an end in itself?
Oh, I think so, Judge.
I think so.
I think you have this understanding that perception is reality.
And you see that reflected in all aspects of our lives.
So why should...
It's the perception that matters.
It's the narrative that matters.
You construct your policy to reinforce your narrative, right?
I mean, this is what we have seen over and over again.
I remember about a year ago, Judge, you and I did a show, and it was about how the Ukraine war was the most propagandized war of all time.
And of course, October 7th happened, and now it's the second most propagandized war.
But the idea that you use propaganda in a variety of different ways, but one of the most important ways is to speak to your own people.
Propaganda certainly can be reflected outward, and it can also be done in a manner to try and condition and change minds on things.
And you saw how that worked in the United States for decades with regards to Israel.
Because they were able to just kind of co-opt American media, control American political leaders, so that we always had a very Israel-first preference in the United States.
And now, over the last 11 months, we have seen that completely be shattered.
you know, the percent of Americans who support Israel has dropped by the double digits.
You know, you had a poll last month that found that 56 percent of Americans don't Is Israel losing the propaganda war?
It's certainly losing the diplomatic war.
It seems like the U.S. is the only country on the planet that backs it up right now.
But is Israel losing the propaganda war?
And I'm going to expand the word propaganda to follow your definition, Matt.
Not just the U.S., but the West and Israel itself.
Right, exactly.
I think, so they're clearly losing the propaganda, the information war in return to those who are outside of their own sphere, to those who are outside of their own constituency.
We see that reflecting the polls.
We see that in one nation after another lined up against them.
We see the willingness of other nations who are lining up to support the axis of resistance.
I mean, you're seeing that effect take hold.
Just mentioned that poll here in the United States that shows how Americans feel about this.
But even within its own constituency, so this internal propaganda, this inward projected propaganda, it has a second secondary and tertiary effects that are cancerous, that are metastasizing, right, that are eating Israel alive.
So what you have and I think, you know, I think I heard you talking to Larry Johnson about.
And Haaretz had an editorial about that just a day or two ago.
And, you know, you can see how this internal propaganda that is used to incite your own base, your own people, how in a...
It's kind of this idea that everyone in Israel got what they wanted, or everyone in power in Israel, the majority of the population, got what they wanted on October 7th, an excuse to carry out their genocide, their ethnic cleansing, right?
to do what they've wanted to do for decades, finish the job with respect to the Palestinians.
They don't know what to do.
And all those internal divisions have now just exploded.
And you have this, we talked about this last time, this prospect of civil war.
I don't think it's a possibility, but you have this crumbling, this devolvement, this destruction within Israel caused by itself eating itself, right?
I mean, so whether if you look at like the IDF, the state of the IDF.
Whether you look at the state of the economy, you look at the political circumstances in Israel, this is why I think the Axis Resistance, they may be planning more attacks.
I think they're playing a long game.
Why wouldn't they?
Because Israel is destroying itself.
Exactly.
You mentioned the Haaretz editorial.
The editorial was written by a retired IDF major general named Yitzhak Barik.
You may know him or know of him.
Here's a couple of the one-liners.
Israel will collapse in a year.
Netanyahu has decided to die with the Philistines.
Netanyahu has lost his humanity, morality, norms, values, sense of responsibility.
Could you imagine Mark Milley saying that about Joe Biden?
Or Donald Trump?
Or Kamala Harris?
It's pretty damning.
Well, and I actually was referring to the editorial board's editorial.
So a separate editorial on Ha Ha Rats is saying the same sorts of things.
And the way the newspaper starts off their editorial is, you know, it's great in the sense that, you know, all we can do is laugh at this at this point, right?
It starts off by saying, in any normal country, right?
And then it ends along the lines of, we are standing on the edge of the abyss here.
Looking at our own destruction.
And certainly their words towards Netanyahu as the chief villain in this tragedy echo what the Major General said in his.
They were a little more polite.
Are there violent confrontations of what in the U.S. would be called blue on blue, police against police?
And I'm talking about Ben Gavir's I mean, you mentioned Ronan Barr.
He referred to a fellow member of the cabinet as provoking Jewish terror.
Right, right.
And that was the gist of this, how Art's editorial was about this idea about Jewish terror.
And, you know, the scale of this, what we're looking at, when you look at the two main figureheads on the right, Itamar Ben-Gavir and Bezalov Smotris, Itamar Ben-Gavir is a national security minister.
So he's in charge of the police, essentially.
He also has, as you were describing, Judge, his own paramilitaries, these settler movements, these religious Kahanist fanatics that are all extremely well-armed, and they're not only emboldened.
But they're protected and enabled by the police.
If you look at that, you were shown last week the video of Ben Gavir going to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Temple Mount, and causing all kinds of problems with his followers.
Who was escorting him through that?
It was the Israeli police, the people that worked for Ben Gavir.
And then Bezal Smotrich, he's not just a finance minister.
He's also got this role where he basically controls the occupied territories.
So he has the administrative side as well as, you know, in the way the reporting works there, you know, not worth getting into, I guess.
But to understand that it's not just their own militias, their own paramilitaries, the settlers that they have behind them.
Let me just stop you.
Those were police escorting him?
Like, FBI agents?
Yes, he'll have his own police.
Well, you can see, if it goes back out, you'll see police in uniform.
But then also, too, certainly the police are the ones who provide the crowd control, who are the ones who are openly armed, who are the ones who are going to arrest and take away anyone who interferes.
And, you know, one of the things you have to also understand, we have to realize and contemplate here, this just didn't happen.
You know, this just didn't occur last week or on October 7th.
You have had decades where you have had Israel administering this occupation.
You have had decades of this othering, of this dehumanization of the Palestinian people.
You have had millennia of this idea of Israel as God's chosen people.
This idea that there's a magical real estate agent in the sky who says this is your land and you can do whatever you want to take it.
And you should do it because that's what I command you to do.
So what you have then is you have a police force.
You have a border police.
You have a government that has people going into it who that's their mindset is.
And the worst elements are the ones that also then pursue that.
So if you say to a group of young men and women, Who wants to go and beat up on the Palestinians?
You'll be given a gun.
You'll be given a salary.
You'll be trained.
And you will do your duty protecting us from them, keeping our people safe, keeping this covenant with our God.
You can be a major—you will be fulfilling your part in that.
Those are the ones who sign up for it.
So it's just not you have these religious fanatics, these reactionary radical figures at the top.
You also have it flushed throughout.
What composes these forces are the very men and women who actually believe this as well and believe that they have a righteous duty, that they are justified.
And then, of course, you have the settler class, which in the video now is showing these young men who very often are exempt from being in the security services.
So outside of the security services, you then have this more extreme, this more radical, more reactionary religious element that, of course, believes that their violence is not just simply justified, but it's necessary.
That they have a divine responsibility to resort to violence, to utilize violence if other methods don't work.
And of course, what we've seen is just this continual evolution of this, this reinforcing of the use of violence for decades.
And now, of course, they just don't have the state sanction in it.
They have the storyline of October 7th behind them as well.
Two days ago, Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire.
Israel claims it shot everything down.
Hezbollah says some of its missiles got through.
I don't know what the truthful answer is.
But I want to ask you about the mentality of the Israeli military.
Isn't the IDF sick of war?
Doesn't the IDF itself generally recognize that it was humiliated in Gaza?
The problem you have, Judge, is you do have those within the IDF who understand that, and they're feeling it.
It's an army of reservists, and this has an impact on the army itself, the military itself, and it also has a huge impact on the economy.
When you have tens and tens of thousands of people being pulled out of the economy to serve in these roles, this is why we say it's bleeding out.
This is why we say it's destroying itself from within.
One of many examples we can give, right?
But with the IDF, certainly they are exhausted.
Taking part in a campaign that their generals no longer see the purposes in other than collective punishment and fulfilling the wishes of the far-right reactionary religious class.
So the IDF is in that position.
They see themselves as those within the IDF, maybe there are, who do believe in a war with Hezbollah, but they know that they are undermanned, unprepared, untrained for that type of war because they've spent the last 10 months shooting men, women, and children on their knees in the back of the head in Gaza.
I mean, so you have that within the IDF, this stress.
The problem, though, again, you know, is who rises to the top?
Who takes advantage of the opportunity presented to them in these circumstances?
I mean, look at, say, our Afghan war three years ago when we left Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation.
Look, I mean, there were men and women after men and women through all ranks of the officer corps of the United States military who felt that the war in Afghanistan was unwinnable, it had no purpose, we should get out, and how many of them actually said anything?
And in those who did get at it themselves, I don't want to be a part of this any longer, well, guess who stayed in, right?
I mean, you had your General Petraeus's, you had your General McChrystal's, you had your General Allen's, right?
I mean, on and on and on.
I mean, so what happens then is even those in the IDF who don't believe in the path that they're on, well, they're just going to be surpassed by those who are willing to go along with the political orders from above.
Right.
Here is General Halevi, who's the official spokesperson for the IDF.
Now, he at one point did criticize Prime Minister Netanyahu.
We are very determined to continue degrading Hezbollah, eliminating more commanders and denying them assets and capabilities.
We are not stopping.
They are not stopping.
That's what Bibi wants to hear, but that's not what his troops under him are saying.
That's what you're telling us.
And that's actually the chief of staff that's the head of the Israeli army.
I confused him with the other general.
Oh, with Hagari?
Yeah, that's a terrible insult.
But, yeah, I mean, you see this position that they put themselves in.
And this is causing the political fractures to explode in Israel, right?
Because there is no plan.
And now that they got what they wanted, and since they got their genocide, what do we do with it?
The IDF is in this position where it has to realize that we are arrayed up against an axis of resistance that is continually being strengthened by outside nations, either continuing to move forward or move towards nations like Russia, like India, like Turkey, like China.
We have a weakened American empire behind us that's increasingly being isolated.
We can go into a fortress Israel mentality, and that might be our future, but what we're going to lose in the meantime.
And I think you have those who are true believers.
I was thinking about this thing about Afghanistan the other day.
I mean, I think what ultimately might come of Israel and its political leadership is that its political leadership.
Nothing will change them, that they are dedicated to principles.
They don't care if their people are starving.
We're not going to allow humanitarian assistance in if that means that women have to be uncovered.
Now, the Israeli far right, the religious reactionary is different, of course, in their scope and everything.
But you could see that type of mentality.
Come to be in Israel, where it's just Israel versus everyone with the backing of the United States.
I'm just curious.
I don't know if you know this.
Are there any female leaders of the Israeli hard right, or are they misogynistic, just like the Taliban?
Yeah, I'd ask Max or Aaron about that.
There certainly are.
They do have women among their top ranks, and you see them.
When you're in the Knesset, you hear them making statements.
I can't tell you who they are.
And yet, I would defer to Max and Aaron.
Max and Aaron and Anya would know that.
Got to go, Matt.
Thank you very much.
A terrific, terrific analysis.
I know we're across the board, but the underlying theme is the use of propaganda to change the minds domestically and foreign policy-wise.
And it's hard to believe that Ukraine or Israel will succeed in that battle, but they are trying.
Right.
When you have your policy is defined, when your policy is made to follow your narrative, this is what happens because eventually you have policy made up of make-believe.
Right.
And that's essentially what we're seeing happen play out in Israel.
And that's essentially what we're seeing play out in Eastern Europe.
And of course, the same thing will happen in Eastern Asia as well.
Thank you, Matt.
We'll see you again next week.
All the best, my friend.
All right.
Thanks, Judge.
Of course.
Coming up at 3 o 'clock Eastern, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski at 4 o 'clock Eastern, Professor John Mearsheimer.
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