Sept. 4, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Wednesday, September 4th, 2024. | |
| Aaron Monte will be here with us in just a minute. | |
| Are you ready for this? | |
| President Zelensky and long-range missiles. | |
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| Aaron, my dear friend, welcome back to the show. | |
| Of course, your time and analysis is much appreciated, and I do want to spend a fair amount of time with you on what President Zelensky has been up to with respect to the shakeup of his cabinet and requesting of the United States government long-range missiles. | |
| But before we do that, some of the more breaking news. | |
| This is a real odd one. | |
| I know over at the gray zone, your expert on Latin America is Anya, | |
| This is a part of a longstanding effort as Anya's latest book, Corporate Coup Documents, by the U.S. to pillage and punish Venezuela for the crime of Venezuela being independent, of not being under the boot of the U.S. in what, you know, | |
| And Venezuela, you know, one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America, one of the, I believe, the world's most valuable oil reserves has refused to submit to U.S. orders. | |
| So there's been a longstanding effort going back more than two decades by the U.S. to overthrow Venezuela's government. | |
| And so they took an opportunity with Maduro in the Dominican Republic to seize his airplane for no other reason but just to teach him a lesson. | |
| Because he's not obedient. | |
| This comes after they've already pillaged the US wing of the Venezuelan state oil company, Citgo, as Anya's book documents. | |
| And, you know, what is the ostensible reason? | |
| It's because the US doesn't recognize Maduro as the winner of the recent Venezuelan election. | |
| I don't know what happened in that election. | |
| I wasn't there on the ground. | |
| You know, this requires an independent And so this is just the latest extension of that longstanding regime change effort. | |
| From my perspective, this is particularly repellent. | |
| The same FBI agents and U.S. marshals that would arrest and prosecute someone for stealing a jet. | |
| Stole a jet, got in it, turned it on, fueled it up, flew it back to the United States. | |
| Again, breaking news, although it's now two days old, Israel erupting over the weekend. | |
| 250,000 people demonstrating against Prime Minister Netanyahu. | |
| Another op-ed in Haaretz. | |
| By General Bricks, another condemnation of the Netanyahu government by Ronan Barr, the head of Shin Bet. | |
| How unstable is the Netanyahu government? | |
| And doesn't the whole world know he has no interest in negotiating a ceasefire and couldn't care less about the hostages? | |
| The whole world does know that, and Israeli society appears to be waking up to that reality as well. | |
| It's unfortunate, though, that we couldn't see this upsurge and protest from the very start when Israeli officials made clear their plans to commit mass murder. | |
| And as that plan has unfolded, you have not seen any massive outrage in Israel at all. | |
| Now, though, because Netanyahu's policy of undermining negotiations, repeatedly adding new conditions that he knows Hamas cannot accept, and ensuring that he's not going to That the Biden administration will always cover for him, as the Biden administration has dutifully done. | |
| Now Israeli society finally is getting fed up and seeing through the fact that he's endangering the hostages, that his policy of carrying out these rescue missions in which, by the way, dozens of Palestinians get slaughtered. | |
| People forget this, but the last successful Israeli mission that rescued a few hostages killed well over 100 Palestinians. | |
| And no one cared because Israeli lives are just deemed to be the only ones that are valuable here. | |
| Palestinian lives don't matter. | |
| One such rescue attempt resulted in, apparently, Hamas executing the Israeli captives. | |
| Israeli society is fed up, and now you're seeing this huge protest, and you're seeing more and more Israeli officials speak out. | |
| People even from inside Netanyahu's coalition are acknowledging that he's undermining the ceasefire talks. | |
| So this will put pressure on him. | |
| Whether he falls or not, I don't know. | |
| he does have still the support of the extremist elements of Israeli society. | |
| It's already a really extreme society. | |
| So this is like the extreme of the extreme. | |
| And that might be enough to keep him in power. | |
| No matter how he lies, and no matter how he deceives, and no matter how he tricks the U.S. government, do you think American military support for him is unconditional? | |
| Unconditional, no matter what he does or says. | |
| He can slaughter innocents. | |
| He can lie and cheat. | |
| He can condemn you and Max in the street right outside the Capitol building. | |
| Gets whatever he wants. | |
| That's been the case so far. | |
| There's no indication yet that the Biden administration is willing to drop its unconditional support. | |
| They've been willing to be humiliated by Netanyahu multiple times. | |
| Remember, you know... | |
| What does Netanyahu do? | |
| Rather than even pay lip service to a Palestinian state that he knows he'll never allow, he went and said publicly there'll never be a Palestinian state. | |
| Recently, Blinken said that Netanyahu had accepted the ceasefire proposal. | |
| And Netanyahu, in his latest effort to undermine the ceasefire proposal, he cited Blinken and said, well, even Blinken said that I'm being generous here and I've accepted the ceasefire proposals, which Blinken knows Netanyahu actually didn't, because what all Netanyahu did was add new conditions that he knew were non-starters for Hamas, namely that Israel would maintain a permanent presence in the Philadelphia corridor between Gaza and Egypt, which even Israeli officials said was not necessary for Israel's security. | |
| That is a very well-policed tunnel that does not pose a threat to Israel. | |
| The only threat to Israel is itself, its insistence on continuing its decades-long occupation and dispossession of Palestinians. | |
| And Netanyahu, luckily for him, has a Biden administration and is firmly committed to that. | |
| Here's what Netanyahu said earlier today, defending his record on the ceasefire talks, cut number five. | |
| I was asked whether Israel is not... | |
| Well, I want to set the record straight. | |
| On April 27th, Secretary of State Blinken said that Israel made an extraordinarily generous offer for a hostage deal. | |
| On May 31st, Hamas refused. | |
| On August 16th, Israel agreed to what the United States defined as a final bridging proposal. | |
| Hamas refused again. | |
| On August 19th, Secretary Blinken said, Israel accepted the US proposal. | |
| Now Hamas must do the same. | |
| On August 28th, that's five days ago, five days ago, Deputy CIA Director said that Israel shows seriousness in the negotiations. | |
| Now Hamas must show the same seriousness. | |
| I want to ask you something. | |
| What has changed in the last five days? | |
| What has changed? | |
| One thing. | |
| These murderers executed. | |
| Six of our hostages, they shot them in the back of the head. | |
| That's what's changed. | |
| And now after this, we're asked to show seriousness? | |
| We're asked to make concessions? | |
| What message does this send Hamas? | |
| It says, kill more hostages, murder more hostages, you'll get more concessions. | |
| The pressure internationally must be directed at these killers, at Hamas. | |
| Not at Israel. | |
| We say yes, they say no all the time, but they also murdered these people. | |
| And now we need maximum pressure on Hamas. | |
| I don't believe that either President Biden or anyone serious about achieving peace and achieving the release would seriously ask Israel to make these concessions. | |
| We've already made them. | |
| Hamas has to make the concession. | |
| Yes, he forgot about all the times Hamas agreed to something and he added conditions that he knew Hamas would never accept. | |
| Yeah, and he benefits from having Antony Blinken being so dishonest and so subservient to Netanyahu that Blinken's been willing to go before the world and lie and basically say that it's Israel that's accepted the proposals, Hamas hasn't, when he knows that the reason why Israel's accepted his proposal is because he keeps bending his proposals to meet Israel's demands. | |
| That's why the Philadelphia corridor issue was added in after that was a settled issue before. | |
| Netanyahu added that because he knew that Hamas could not accept it. | |
| Netanyahu, with Blinken's support, also added a condition that would have a permanent Israeli presence basically harassing any Palestinian who wants to return to their home in the north. | |
| Another permanent Israeli presence in Gaza. | |
| So that's the U.S. acceding to Netanyahu's demands that there be two separate Israeli permanent positions in Gaza Make life for Palestinians even more miserable. | |
| And of course, no Palestinian faction could agree to that. | |
| But Netanyahu can get before the world and say that it's Hamas' fault because Blinken has been covering for him. | |
| And it makes Blinken look even more stupid because now when the Biden administration goes before the world and complains about Netanyahu because he's just so intransigent, Netanyahu can understandably go and say, well, listen, hey, these people said I was being generous. | |
| So it's the Biden administration that's put itself. | |
| In such a corner because it refuses to apply any pressure on Israel. | |
| And again, it could have had a hostage deal a long time ago. | |
| Before even Israeli troops entered into Gaza, Hamas offered to free all of the captives. | |
| All of them. | |
| All of them. | |
| If Israel agreed not to invade Gaza. | |
| Israel refused to even discuss that. | |
| There's been multiple opportunities that have been thwarted. | |
| And Netanyahu's sanctimoniousness, it reminds me a bit, I mean, Israeli leaders are During the first Antifada, which was a largely nonviolent uprising with the exception of, you know, Palestinian kids throwing some rocks at Israeli soldiers, if you want to call that violence. | |
| Okay. | |
| And Yitzhak Rabin, then the defense minister, who ordered his soldiers to break the bones of Palestinians, literally break their bones. | |
| That was his order. | |
| And went on to become... | |
| He said, this rock, this rock was thrown at our soldiers. | |
| Like, the entitlement they have, that they can go and just brutalize and occupy people, and that the other side can dare to fight back. | |
| And in this case of Hamas, dare to have some demands that include not having this repressive genocidal force, having a permanent presence in their territory. | |
| To Israeli leaders... | |
| And they're so indignant the world would dare question their determination to keep on occupying and killing Palestinians. | |
| And keeping 10,000 Palestinians in administrative detention under horrific conditions without charges or trial. | |
| Before we transition over to the latest in Ukraine, Hamas has denied executing these six hostages. | |
| Have there been any independent forensics? | |
| There haven't, but the one statement that I saw from Hamas mentioned that because of the last rescue operation in which Israel slaughtered over 100 Palestinians, I believe is the number, at least dozens of Palestinians, to rescue a few hostages. | |
| After that, Hamas said that they changed their rules. | |
| And the thrust of that statement, I think, was that basically now they're allowed to kill hostages if Israel is close to coming in and rescuing them by military force. | |
| So I took from that that in this case, Hamas did kill them. | |
| But yeah, no, there would be no forensics as far as I've seen. | |
| So I don't know what the exact story was. | |
| But the implication to me of that Hamas statement was that they're responsible for those deaths. | |
| But really, the ultimate responsibility, I think, lies with Netanyahu, who could have freed all these people had he just been willing to accept a ceasefire and been willing to... | |
| That's right. | |
| And also that would, you know, end early the Israeli attempt to ethnically cleanse as much of Gaza as possible or destroy as much of it as possible so that people don't want to live there anymore, which is... | |
| Transitioning over to Ukraine. | |
| What happened over the weekend? | |
| Is Zelensky so desperate that he somehow thinks that he who has no legal authority whatsoever can ask for and receive the resignation of senior members of his cabinet and actually purport to replace them at this desperate moment in the war? | |
| Well, listen, the argument is made that Zelensky has no more authority because his term lapsed and there were no new elections. | |
| For me, that's for Ukrainians to decide. | |
| I don't weigh in on that because I'm not Ukrainian. | |
| He does still seem to have some popular support, so that's for them to decide. | |
| But the shakeup in the cabinet and the resignation of his foreign minister, Kaleba, is a really big deal. | |
| What I don't know is whether... | |
| But his role from the start has been to undermine diplomacy. | |
| Before Russia invaded in February 2022, right before, the same month, Kuleba basically declared that Ukraine will never implement the Minsk Accords, which is the peace deal that could have prevented Russia's invasion. | |
| It was the peace deal reached in 2015. | |
| to end the war that began after the US-backed coup the previous year in 2014. | |
| And the premise of Minsk was that basically Kyiv would recognize the autonomous rights of millions of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who revolted after their government was overthrown in a US-backed coup. | |
| And simply, it would let them elect their own officials, their own judges. | |
| It would let them speak Russian without facing discrimination, which is what they faced immediately after the U.S.-backed coup because the U.S.-backed Maidan coup was driven by fanatical alternationalists. | |
| And rather than implement the Minsk Accords, the Ukrainian government stalled and basically refused to do it, which was a major factor in Russia's invasion because Ukraine at that point was not only saying it wouldn't implement the Minsk Accords, but it was threatening to retake the Donbass by force. | |
| And so Russia paid attention to that. | |
| And Kuleba basically, I think, helped ensure that Russia would invade when Russia. | |
| Is this him, Aaron? | |
| That is him, yes. | |
| That is him. | |
| And since then, basically, he has attempted to downplay the very real progress that was made in Istanbul right after Russia invaded, when Ukrainian and Russian officials met and hammered out a really detailed piece. | |
| He was not, I think, a major player in those talks. | |
| That was a different faction of the Ukrainian government. | |
| And he undermined them by basically embracing Zelensky's decision to walk away from the deal under U.S. and U.K. pressure. | |
| Why did he leave? | |
| Did he jump or was he pushed? | |
| That's a great question. | |
| Things are not going well for Ukraine. | |
| And when things are not going well for Ukraine, like, for example, after the counteroffensive last year, And there's been this decision, as you've covered extensively, for Ukraine to invade Kursk, a completely militarily insignificant region of Russia. | |
| There was a play, I think, to try to take control of Russia's nuclear plant there. | |
| That's failed. | |
| So now Ukraine is left in holding Russian territory that is like, you know, it's just a tiny speck of dust. | |
| Comparatively to how big Russia is. | |
| And it's not militarily significant. | |
| And to do that, they had to divert forces from the Donbass. | |
| And this is going to be, I think, a real disaster for them in the long run. | |
| And so perhaps Zelensky's looking for scapegoats. | |
| Perhaps, I mean, I'm being hopeful here. | |
| Perhaps maybe Delenky will replace him with a foreign minister who's actually interested in negotiating and diplomacy. | |
| But I fear actually that the people replacing him will be even more extreme, which is hard to fathom. | |
| While this is going on, is it true that Zelensky has been lobbying Blinken-Sullivan and through them Biden for long-range missiles, which after Americans fire them, would reach deep into Russia, even to Moscow itself? | |
| Correct. | |
| And this appears actually to be the main goal of the Kursk operation. | |
| Ukraine is so desperate. | |
| They know they're losing Donbass. | |
| By the way, they don't really want a lot of the people who live in the Donbass anyway. | |
| Part of the reason why people like Koleba didn't like the Minsk Accords is because it would have forced Ukraine to reintegrate millions of ethnic Russians who actually they didn't want inside their country anymore because these people are not Ukrainian alternationalists. | |
| They want to speak Russian and they want friendly ties with Russia. | |
| And for Ukrainian ultranationalists, that's a non-starter. | |
| So Zelenskyy, Zelensky said before the NATO summit of last summer, not this recent summer, but last summer, he said, before the summit, we have to show results. | |
| And what did he mean by that? | |
| We have to show our NATO sponsors that we can fulfill their goal of bleeding Russia. | |
| So I think the aim here in Kurs was to go in, humiliate Putin, and hope that... | |
| And the question hanging over this, is Biden deranged enough to do this? | |
| And it's been a question that's hard to answer because Biden has been so unhinged in his support for continuing this proxy war, for sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, and in Israel as well. | |
| We've seen what he's capable of. | |
| He's basically setting the whole region on fire. | |
| Sentencing tens of thousands of Palestinians to death because of his commitment to U.S.-Israeli hegemony. | |
| So, would Biden be so crazy and so deranged and so committed to his ultimate goal, his only goal, which is to bleed Russia, to let Ukraine use these long-range weapons to strike Russia? | |
| So far, it appears he's holding his ground, but with him, you can never rule it out. | |
| They'll take a poll. | |
| They can ask Vice President Harris's pollsters to take a poll on this. | |
| Is it snarky or realistic? | |
| To believe that Ukraine will last at least until November 6th of this year? | |
| That's a great question. | |
| If you look at the way Russia has fought this war, it seems like they've basically been willing to wait this out. | |
| They know they have the advantage in manpower, in weaponry, and they've been willing to let the Ukrainians grind themselves. | |
| I think that's been the strategy. | |
| So if I'm making a prediction, and again, military analysis is not my forte. | |
| I think it's fair to say this will last beyond the election, but how much longer into this winter can Ukraine last? | |
| They recently pulled out of talks that would have called for a truce on bombing energy infrastructure, which was much more important to Ukraine because, you know, the winter is coming up and Ukraine is going to have a hard time heating itself. | |
| And Zelensky sacrificed that just to keep fulfilling his fantasy that he can land some kind of knockout punch to Russia by invading Kurs, for example, and then get Biden's blessing for long range strikes. | |
| So it's not paying off. | |
| So I do think this will go past the election, but how much longer beyond that, you know, I wouldn't be betting on a very, very long range. | |
| All of our military guests are of the view that the use of these intercontinental ballistic missiles on the military school Two days ago in Poltava was a legitimate military target. | |
| These were officers being trained to engage in offensive use, offensive weaponry against Russia. | |
| And they were being trained by Swedish and Polish officials, many of whom were killed in the bombing. | |
| You know, I can't share that assessment because I don't think actually Russia's assault on Ukraine is legal. | |
| I think it was provoked, and I understand why Russia did it, but I don't think it's legal. | |
| And so whether or not that military facility is a legitimate target, that's not for me to say. | |
| admittedly some area of expertise. | |
| What I do know is that there's been a pattern in this war where Russia invaded Namely, to implement the Minsk Accords and to agree to neutrality, which its founding constitution called for. | |
| So that was not a radical demand. | |
| And rather than engage with that, and rather than accept the peace deal that some Ukrainian officials negotiated in Istanbul, Ukraine chose war. | |
| And every time they've done that, every time they've escalated, Russia has made them pay for it. | |
| This is a longstanding pattern. | |
| So this attack on the facility, whether it was legal or not, it comes after Ukraine invades Russia, goes for this nuclear power plant in Kursk. | |
| So it was predictable. | |
| As has always been the case throughout this war, that Russia was going to head back. | |
| So this is the result. | |
| And this will keep happening to Ukraine until someone can finally have the courage to say, you know what, this has gone on for too long. | |
| We've sacrificed too many people. | |
| All for what? | |
| So we can have a theoretical right to join NATO, which the U.S. keeps dangling over us, but ultimately they're not even that serious about, which they're just using as a basically, as bait to bleed Russia. | |
| And so that we can keep fighting off. | |
| Our obligation to recognize that there are millions of ethnic Russians in Ukraine who haven't wanted to live under a coup government and we need to respect their rights. | |
| Until someone can say that we need to actually stop all this, we need to stop being used by the U.S., these kinds of strikes will continue by Russia. | |
| Aaron Monte, thank you, my dear friend. | |
| I know we're all over the place, from the Dominican Republic to Gaza to Poltava, but we very much appreciate your analysis, as always. | |
| All the best, my friend. | |
| Thank you, Judge. | |
| Of course. | |
| Coming up tomorrow, a busy and fulfilling day for you. | |
| Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Schaefer at 8 in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at 9 in the morning, all times Eastern as usual, Colonel Larry Wilkerson at 2 in the afternoon, the great Professor John Mearsheimer at 3 in the afternoon, |
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