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Sept. 28, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
30:27
INTEL Roundtable w / Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap Up
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Thank you, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, September 27th, 2024.
It's our favorite time of the week.
It's the end of the day.
It's the end of the week.
I'm with my two dear friends with whom I start the week, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, for our Intelligence Community Roundtable.
Gentlemen, we have a lot to talk about.
Vladimir Zelensky in Pennsylvania, New York, and Washington, D.C., and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
I'll start with Netanyahu.
As he was speaking, the IDF was announcing that it had succeeded in assassinating Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah.
Do we know if this is true, Ray McGovern?
It is true that they made the announcement that it happened, but is it true that it actually happened?
I'm told that it did not actually happen, that he is safe, and that's information as of 20 minutes ago.
What would the Israelis gain, Larry, by making an announcement of this magnitude without knowing for sure that it's true?
Let's back up.
What would they gain by killing him?
There's probably two or three people that would replace him in a heartbeat.
Yeah, people who would be more radical than he is, more likely to strike.
So one of the reasons they could go out and announce this is just to see if by announcing something false, they can get Hezbollah to come out and say, no, no, that's not true.
And they can use the communication to try to actually locate it.
So that could be, there's one way that you put out false information in order to elicit a reaction so you can actually identify where they perhaps may be operating from.
But, you know, this Israeli mythology.
It's not so much Israeli.
It's the Zionist mythology that they can run around and assassinate people and that solves problems.
Well, we've seen it with Donald Trump.
We assassinated Soleimani.
Oh, that eliminated the Iranian threat, right?
No, it does not settle the problem.
And it's all predicated on the false notion that you can kill your way to peace.
You can't.
Prime Minister Netanyahu was very, very bellicose today at the United Nations, attacking the United Nations itself.
Now, he spoke.
We have some B-roll of people leaving the auditorium as he walked up onto the podium.
He spoke to a nearly, I would say, 95% empty auditorium.
But there were a lot of applause for him because the Israelis packed the galleries with their employees at the UN and at the American Consulate.
I'm not sure who the people were.
I recognized a few of them because I know them from Fox, Ron Dermer, and a few of the others.
They were, of course, leading the applause.
This goes on for quite a while, these people are leaving.
In fairness to Netanyahu, I think they timed the leaving so they could all get on camera leaving, but of course they didn't want to be there and listen to him.
Let's start with cut number 19, Chris.
All the hostility directed at Israel this year, it's not about Gaza.
It's about Israel.
It's always been about Israel, about Israel's very existence.
And I say to you, until Israel, until the Jewish state is treated like other nations, until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce.
Well, how many countries Put explosives in pagers that they know are sold to other countries.
How many countries glory in the assassinations that you were just talking about, Larry, and then claim respectability?
Yeah.
No, I mean, this is a lawless nation.
And they have conducted themselves accordingly.
When you pick up and you imprison 10,000 Palestinians.
Without charging them with crime.
And you hold them and you torture them.
You know, that's not a civilized country.
When you routinely launch military strikes against neighboring countries, whether it's Syria or Lebanon, and you always justify it all, we're under attack.
And yet, when you total up the actual numbers, it's Israel.
This killing the disproportionate number of civilians.
They always like to pretend, oh, they've killed our civilians.
But they're killing Palestinians at a rate of, for every Israeli that's ever died, they've killed 10 Palestinians.
Ray, do you have an opinion as to whether or not the IDF could sustain a land invasion of Lebanon without U.S. Marines or U.S. troops there with them, which seems like it's unlikely to happen, the U.S. troops part.
I do have an opinion.
They would not succeed without direct U.S. or some other kind of ally participation.
And the ironic thing is the IDF knows that, and so does the U.S. military.
And General Austin, Secretary of Defense Austin, is treading a really fine line here saying we're going to defend Israel all the way.
And yet it's not clear that he will be able to So it's up for grabs as to whether Netanyahu can mousetrap our president, our sitting president, Biden, into entering the war and whether our military would follow orders to do that.
Despite the likely outcome, a wider regional war in the Middle East.
What would be the feeling, Larry, in the military and maybe even in the intelligence community, American intelligence community, about actually standing side by side in a war in the Middle East against a country and a group of people, correct me if I'm wrong, Larry, Hezbollah and Lebanon, that poses not a scintilla of threat to the national security of the United
We were throwing battleships, throwing major shells into the Bacow Valley.
And so it was retaliation by the Shia against us for our intervention.
The United States is in no position to put troops on the ground and sustain those troops in a fight.
If you go back to 2003, we had a six- to eight-month buildup.
Of moving forces, moving supplies into the region before we were actually able to launch an attack.
Well, today, we don't have that luxury.
We're not going to be able to carry out such a buildup unnoticed, particularly if we decide to go after Iran.
So this is just meaningless military chest-thumping.
It's not going to translate into anything that actually is significant.
Here's more chest-thumping, Ray, for you to comment on Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Cut number 18, Chris.
The singling out of the one and only Jewish state continues to be a moral stain on the United Nations.
It has made this once respected institution contemptible in the eyes of decent people everywhere.
But for the Palestinians, this UN House of Darkness They know that in this swamp of anti-Semitic bile, there's an automatic majority willing to demonize the Jewish state on anything.
In this anti-Israel, flat-earth society, any false charge, any outlandish allegation can muster a majority.
In the last decade, there have been more resolutions passed against Israel in this fall.
At the UN General Assembly than against the entire world combined.
And of course, where it really counts in the Security Council, every single one of those resolutions is vetoed by the United States, Ray McGovern.
Just think of the difference between the reception that Netanyahu got in the U.S. Congress.
With 53 or so stand-up ovations and the one he just got early this morning.
Good point.
So what will happen in Congress?
Will they still be motivated by greed and by the ability of the Israeli lobby to keep them all in power?
Or will they see, for God's sake, will they see that there can be no security without mutual?
Now, Netanyahu is the archetypal leader who does not understand that there can be no security for Israel without mutual security for those surrounding countries.
and he's gone off the edge here partly for personal reasons and there's not any good coming from this for the state of Israel he's isolated as never before and my bet
this is doubly stupid because, as Secretary Austin said today, the casualties would be immense as bad as the ones already happening in Gaza.
Larry, do you think that a speech of the United Nations blasting the United Nations is just for domestic Israeli political consumption?
It was not part of the Dale Carnegie course, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
I don't think he took or passed that course.
No, no, not in his bailiwick.
This was entirely for domestic political consumption.
Look, I went and told them off.
Okay.
And you accomplished what?
Did he find...
You know what?
I think I'm going to start supporting Israel.
If anything else, if you're sitting there and you're part of the UN bureaucracy, you're going to go, this jerk off.
Who is he to come here and lecture us?
We're not the ones killing women and children.
We're not the ones dropping bombs at hospitals and schools.
We're not the ones that are killing reporters.
We're not the ones that are killing United Nations aid workers to the tune of about 200.
So you don't really total it all up.
You know, BB doesn't...
He lacks any sense of grace and any sense of decorum.
And so this is just one more example of how Israel...
Yeah, you know, he did talk, we don't have the clip about it, but he did talk about how the Israelis and the Saudis were getting close to normalization, and then October 7th, in his view, stopped all that, and he called for that to resume.
Well, Mohammed bin Salman has said, forget about it without the two-state solution, which, of course, is not going to happen with the current Israeli leadership.
But I also want to play what Mahmoud Abbas said, who was personally attacked by name, which I gather is against protocol in the UN, according to Jeff Sachs.
Personally attacked by name several times by Netanyahu.
We don't have that clip, but here's what President Abbas said two days ago.
we will not leave we will not leave we will not leave Well, this Palestine is our homeland.
It is the land of our fathers, of our grandfathers.
It will remain ours.
And if anyone were to leave, it would be the occupying usurpers.
I come to you today as my people for almost a year now are subject to the most heinous crimes of our era.
It is a crime of a full-scale death.
I mean, what he said is incontrovertible.
It's obviously inconsistent with Netanyahu's theory of things.
Do you think, Ray, that the regional resistance...
I mean, Ritter and McGregor and Mearsheimer all say that King Abdullah of Jordan is on very thin ice remaining in his monarchy because the people of Jordan are so overwhelmingly furious at what's going on in Israel.
And of course, he's not only not doing anything about it militarily, he, you know, cooperated with the Israelis many times during his kingship.
What do you think?
What's coming, Ray?
And then I'll ask you the same question, Larry.
I regret to say that however strongly they feel, they've not been able to do much.
Paraphrasing Stalin and how many divisions the Pope has, how many divisions do the Palestinian people have, even in Jordan, where they comprise a large portion of the population?
So I think they're going to be moderate still.
They're going to wait to see if the U.S. can be provoked into this to support Israel.
Meanwhile, in several ways, Hezbollah has the upper hand.
They have missiles galore.
They haven't even used their best ones.
They can hit Israel.
And, you know, it will be a matter of them gradually coming to their senses and neither Iran nor Lebanon letting themselves be provoked the way Netanyahu dearly wishes them to be provoked.
Larry, before you respond to the same question, here's President Erdogan of Turkey using the H word.
Tell me if this is just bluster or if it means anything.
Cut number 17. 70 years ago, just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by an alliance of humanity.
We believe that the General Assembly's authority to recommend the use of force as in the 1950 resolution on unity for peace Should be considered in this process.
Is this just bluster?
Sort of the same question I put to Ray.
Will the resistance say enough is enough?
We could get him a job at a hot air balloon park where he could fill the hot air balloons.
It would be an unlimited source of energy for them.
He's just a big talker.
He's not a doer.
He can solve this very easily.
Cut off Israel's oil.
Once Israel has to go to the commercial market and have to buy even more expensive oil, its economy is already in deep trouble.
In fact, I think that's how this thing is ultimately going to get sorted out.
Not through military, but rather the economy is going to force a change in Israel's policies.
Israel is not going to be able to sustain itself economically if it keeps up at this rate.
And we're going to see, you know, Iran has the luxury of using the Houthis as a cutout.
Iran can actually supply the Houthis with missiles that Iran might normally fire at Israel and let the Houthis do it.
Houthis are quite happy.
They apparently threw out a bunch of missiles today at U.S. destroyers in the Red Sea.
So they're not afraid.
They're happy to fight.
And we don't have the ability to stop them.
Here's the UN High Commissioner condemning the IDF and Mossad.
Cut number four.
These attacks represent a new development in warfare, where communication tools become weapons, simultaneously exploding across marketplaces, on street corners, and in homes as daily life unfolds.
Authorities have reportedly dismantled unexploded devices in universities, banks, and hospitals.
This has unleashed widespread fear, panic, and horror among people in Lebanon, already suffering in an increasingly volatile situation since October 2023, This cannot be the new normal.
Can the General Assembly do anything, Ray, without the Security Council?
They can.
There's this Uniting for Peace resolution, which has allowed this to happen in the past.
It's a very cumbersome process, and it would take a while.
Meanwhile, I think we just have to remember that this all depends on what Biden does.
And Blinken is his chief advisor and Netanyahu's lawyer on the Middle East.
So nothing's going to happen in the next six weeks and probably for the next six weeks plus two months from the U.S. side.
The question is whether our military can resist being drawn in directly into this fray, because once that happens, it's a regional war.
And lots of things happen, including diverting attention from what happens in Ukraine.
That might be something welcomed by the White House at this point.
Larry, switching gears to Ukraine, did President Zelensky gain anything from his trip to the U.S. to Pennsylvania to watch Governor Shapiro sign artillery shells to New York?
There's Governor Shapiro.
Sort of like Ambassador Nikki Haley signing shells on their way to Gaza, where she signed them and wrote, finished them.
Whatever, another story for another time about her.
Then, of course, he went to New York and addressed the UN.
Then he went to Washington and met with President Biden and Vice President Harris.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives refused to meet him.
Then he went back to New York and met with former President Trump, who wants to end...
So my question is, after all this traveling, do you think he accomplished anything this week?
He got some frequent flyer miles.
Get some reward points.
You're on a roll today.
I mean, apart from that, he goes back with nothing.
Maybe he got a t-shirt or two.
Maybe Trump gave him a MAGA hat, okay?
But if anything, the fact that Zalini...
If Harris had it locked up, as the pollsters are claiming, if Harris was rolling to victory, as the pollsters are claiming, why would Zelensky waste his time going to see a loser?
That's not what happened.
He went there to see Trump and he was sucking up the Trump big time.
Cause you know, Trump in front of Zelensky says, I don't have good relations with you.
Then Trump said, I'm going to make a deal that you both will be happy with.
But that is inconceivable.
Yeah.
Well, actually, it was like that scene out of the opening of The Godfather where the undertaker's in there asking the godfather to go whack the boyfriend of his daughter who beat his daughter up.
And the godfather says, hey, you disrespected me.
You've never come to be my friend.
And The Undertaker goes, be my friend.
That was Zelensky today.
Be my friend.
And because Trump responded, it takes two to tango.
You've got to have two to do the dance.
So, you know, he goes back to Ukraine with sort of like The Undertaker, only he's got to be preparing for his own funeral.
Ray, do you think that the Kremlin is suspicious?
Maybe we could stop right there.
Maybe they're always suspicious.
Do you think the Kremlin is suspicious of the announcement by President Biden and Prime Minister Starmer that they will not authorize the Ukrainians to use British and American long-range missiles?
Do you think that the Kremlin thinks this is an election stunt?
Do you think that this announcement by the two of them has any credibility in the Kremlin?
Judge, I think that Putin's generals and admirals do not believe it.
They're not allowed to believe this kind of thing.
They look at the situation on the ground.
I think Putin and his political associates say, well, we drew a red line and the US and the UK stepped back.
And I think that's true.
I think that our military prevailed over Biden saying this is not a good idea to provide that.
And lately, of course, in the wake of Zelensky's visit here, there's no indication that Biden has changed his mind.
Now, the big thing here is with Zelensky.
Now, he met with Biden, right?
And then he met with Harris.
And the press was there for a big media event.
And as soon as they said, they left.
There were no questions or answers, because there are no answers to the types of questions that even a lame press would ask.
That was highly indicative.
Never before, in my experience, has there been two consecutive big meetings between the president and a foreign president, and then a president and an aspiring president.
And no Q&A allowed.
The people screaming from the press.
But now, what does that tell you?
That tells you that the policy is bankrupt.
It shows that Zelensky is on his way out.
And the only question is, what happens between now and six weeks from now?
Because Kamala Harris is in danger.
Let me tell you the informal poll I took here in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Ten people, eight of which said we're voting for Trump.
Why?
Because he's going to end My God.
They don't ask how he's going to do that or anything like that.
But they're aware that this was a godforsaken idea and that it's got to stop.
And I dare say this is probably indicative of many Americans, not so much Trumpists, but other Americans that want to see an end to this damn thing.
And instead of that, Kamala Harris doubles down, pledging complete support for Zelensky and her prepared remarks at that supposedly.
Press conference.
Larry, what's your take?
I want to go back to Israel before we conclude.
What do you think happens with Hezbollah, Lebanon, and the IDF?
Netanyahu's never going to agree to a ceasefire, no matter what he wants us to think.
The IDF is busy telling itself it's doing a hell of a job.
We're winning.
We're destroying Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is staying beneath the earth and then, uh, hardened bunkers not being touched.
And, I think Israel is going to be overcome by its own arrogance and hubris that they will go into southern Lebanon and they will suffer a significant defeat.
I think it's been outlined by Scott Ritter and Doug McGregor previously.
At that point, Israel may lash out.
At Iran in a desperate ploy.
They may even try to use a nuke, thinking that one nuke will solve something, or even three or four nukes will solve something.
So I think the whole situation surrounding the Palestinians, the Israelis, the Hezbollah, that is the most dangerous part of the world right now, because that's the one that can get out of control the quickest, because at least on the Russian side, you've got some adults in charge.
In the Middle East, you don't have any adults in charge, either in Israel or Washington.
Chris just reminded me we have a sound and tape of Prime Minister Netanyahu sounding like Joe Biden, boasting we are winning.
So, Ray, before you address the same question, let's listen to cut number 20. I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran.
If you strike us, we will strike you.
There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.
And that's true of the entire Middle East.
Far from being lambs led to the slaughter, Israel's soldiers have brought back with incredible courage and with heroic sacrifice.
And I have another message for this assembly and for the world outside this hall.
We are winning!
Incredible courage and heroic sacrifice as they put bullets in the foreheads of babies, Ray McGovern.
Well, this business is about the long arm of the Israeli Defense Forces.
Look at the map.
Look at the map.
Look at how big Iran is and how their forces are dispersed and hidden underground.
Israel doesn't have the capability to attack Iran without a terrible reaction, and they wouldn't dare do it without U.S. permission.
And that's the fly in the ointment.
They're a Zionist, pure and simple, running U.S. policy.
Biden the first.
Lincoln the second, Sullivan the third.
Will they prevail under Netanyahu's leadership to condone this kind of thing?
I don't know.
I'd like to think there's more sense, but as Larry has just said, the adults in the room on Ukraine seem to be missing on Israel.
Gentlemen, thank you.
Thank you very much for the double duty.
These Friday afternoons are terrific.
The audience is huge and they love it.
I deeply and personally appreciate all your time.
We look forward to seeing you on Monday morning.
All right.
Good luck tomorrow.
Thank you.
The tomorrow of which Ray and Larry speak, of course, is the Peace and Freedom Rally in Kingston, New York, about two hours north of New York City, if you're going to be anywhere in the Northeast.
Scott Ritter, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampol, Gerald Salenti, Joe Lauria, Roger Waters from Pink Floyd, and yours truly will be there.
It'll last about four hours.
We're each only going to speak about 20 minutes or so because we're giving it our all to publicize the fact that millions of Americans think the United States should not be fighting these wars, which we seem to have been fighting continuously.
And we'll have all of your usual customary and favorite guests on next week.
Have a great weekend.
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