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Oct. 9, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:31
Aaron Maté : Tension Between Biden and Netanyahu
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, October 9th, 2024.
Aaron Mate joins us now.
Aaron, always a pleasure, my friend.
I've been starting off almost all of my interviews this week with a couple of standard questions, which I'll put to you as well.
How has the Middle East landscape changed in the past 365 days?
Well, in terms of the most concrete physical terms, the Middle East has seen an entire area, an entire community, Gaza, destroyed.
We have to be clear about that.
Israel has destroyed Gaza.
This is a point that Norman Finkelstein, someone I've learned a lot from over the years when it comes to Israel-Palestine, has been stressing recently.
And he's right.
Israel had from the start, And although Israel has not expelled the majority of Gaza who are still trapped in the death camp, it has destroyed the majority of their infrastructure.
And it might never return.
I mean, there's talk now of one-day reconstruction, but it will take years for the rubble to even be cleared.
Before a theoretical reconstruction can begin.
So in terms of the actual physical change to the Middle East, it's worth reflecting on that.
This entire area, home to more than 2 million people, is in ruins.
Deliberately.
I mean, they have taken bulldozers to infrastructure, to roads and highways and buildings that they didn't destroy with their bombs, have they not?
Yes, they have.
And they've exploded.
They've done controlled explosions of mosques and schools with the aim of, you know, making Gaza unlivable.
Also hospitals, as we're speaking, another hospital in northern Gaza, the last one there functioning, has been ordered to evacuate.
And the doctors there are saying that they won't leave as long as their patients are there, which is we've seen that happen more and more over and over throughout the course of this genocide.
And the world has let it happen.
This is unprecedented where the systemic destruction of hospitals by an invading army against a defenseless population has never happened before.
But it's been abetted by U.S. media as we know about.
Let me just plug on that front.
Max Blumenthal just put out a documentary at the Grey Zone going through all the lies that Israel has produced.
In its propaganda campaign to manufacture consent for genocide.
I strongly recommend it for those who haven't seen it.
So in other channels, It's called Atrocity Inc.
Right.
And it's a synthesis of all the reporting Max has done.
Really invaluable.
And I can't stress that enough over the past year to, you know, just debunk all the lies Israel has told to portray Hamas as this barbaric, demonic force that can't be negotiated with, that has to be destroyed.
In a scorched earth campaign that takes Gaza along with it.
And the lies we were told, first of all, covering up the role of Israeli forces in killing their own people on October 7th via the Hannibal Directive.
Other lies about atrocities that did not happen.
Because Israel was not satisfied to just let the atrocities that did happen on October 7th speak for themselves.
But I'm digressing.
So in terms of changes to the Middle East, you have destruction of Gaza.
Hezbollah has, I think, been seriously weakened with the elimination of their And now we're all waiting to see what Israel does next with Iran, seizing this opportunity to go after its top target, which is Iran, because Iran is the strongest deterrent in that region overall to Israeli aggression and hegemony.
So this is unprecedented.
Unfortunately, the damage to the Middle East and the world, it's still unfolding, and it's far from being over.
What is the status of military conflict in Gaza?
Are there still IDF on the ground, shooting people with guns and being shot at back by Hamas?
Well, Norman Finkelstein has also made this point that in terms of actual fighting over the last year, there's been very little.
If you look at the Israeli casualty count, the official one, the average comes out to about one soldier per day or even less than one Israeli soldier per day dying, which means there isn't actually much direct combat.
You'll occasionally get videos of Hamas operatives, you know, destroying Israeli tanks and firing on soldiers.
But really, this is just a massacre, a genocide from afar, where Israel just uses its overwhelming force, one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world.
Armed with U.S. weapons, 2,000-pound bombs, just bombing at will, targeting civilians, not killing civilians inadvertently, but just killing civilians on purpose because its target is the people of Gaza.
It's not even Hamas.
I don't think Israel even cares that much about Hamas.
Their aim was to make Gaza unlivable if they couldn't cleanse it of all of its people.
So yes, occasionally you will still see fighting.
But the idea that this is a war, a battle, I mean, that's just Israeli propaganda to provide cover for a genocide.
Is Israel stronger, more stable, or weaker and less stable today than it was a year ago, or somewhere in between?
Well, you know, here I might disagree with some of the analysis we've heard on this show, but from my point of view, I think tactically they're stronger.
Because what was their goal in Gaza?
I'm sorry to repeat myself, but I don't think it really was to eradicate Hamas.
I think it was to seize the opportunity of October 7th to destroy Gaza, to finally solve the issue of Gaza, which has long been the center of Palestinian resistance, the heart of it.
They left it in ruins and made it unlivable.
So no matter the extent of the damage to Hamas, whether Sinwar survives or not, So in that respect, there's a tactical success.
They also took out Nasrallah, who was a really savvy and capable leader, who was basically forced to intervene after October 7th, even though I don't think he approved of October 7th.
certainly had no advanced knowledge of it according to all accounts but he had to intervene because And if they had done nothing, they would have lost all credibility.
And again, as Finkelstein points out, Hezbollah's intervention was calibrated to do something in the hope that that would put just enough pressure on Israel to stop the massacres in Gaza, but not plunge Lebanon into a full-scale war with Israel.
And Israel took the opportunity of that to wait it out.
Until it had sufficiently destroyed Gaza before it could turn its attention to Lebanon and with the blessing of the Biden administration.
And so it has dealt a serious blow to Hezbollah.
Of course, the fighting capacity of Hezbollah is still there.
But as everybody knows, I don't think this point is controversial.
Where is Hezbollah's deterrent capacity, its fighting ability at its strongest?
It's when it's engaging in ground combat with Israel.
But Israel knows.
That it can still inflict heavy damage on Lebanon and Hezbollah by just bombing it from afar, where it does have the advantage.
Even though Hezbollah does have capabilities to strike Israel, it doesn't compare to what Israel can do to Lebanon.
And unlike Hezbollah, Israel doesn't care about killing civilians.
In fact, it intends to kill civilians.
That's codified in its doctrine, named after Dahia, the area south of Beirut that Israel's been bombing relentlessly and where it killed Nasrallah.
So it has the advantage there in two respects.
It can bomb from afar.
It doesn't care about killing civilians.
It kills them on purpose.
And it doesn't have to fight Hezbollah directly to inflict damage on Hezbollah.
How has the economic problems in Israel affected its stability, its loss of investment, and its loss of Palestinian workers and other problems directly attached?
It's certainly lost a lot of money, and there is the fact that 60,000 people have been displaced in the north because of Hezbollah's intervention, and that's costly to keep sheltering them in hotels.
But I think Israel as a U.S. colony can absorb the cost.
I think it's calculated that it can absorb any cost if it can pursue its ultimate goal, which is to destroy any resistance to it and solidify its hegemony in the region.
And it's fully subsidized in that endeavor by the U.S. I mean, whatever Israel is suffering economically, we are footing the bill, just as we're footing the bill of maintaining Ukraine as a proxy against Russia, because for the U.S., ultimately, anything that can be done to advance its hegemony is worth the price.
With Joe Biden effectively out of the picture, who are calling the shots in American foreign policy with respect to Israel?
Is it fair to say that it's McGurk, Hochstein, Bill Burns.
Bill Burns is interesting.
And I guess Tony Blinken.
Yeah, well...
I don't blame you for laughing.
The State Department is a joke.
We'll play that clip in a little while.
But the State Department is without credibility by any objective standard.
Absolutely.
And Jeffrey Sachs on your show has talked about this at length, how Blinken is one of the worst, if not the worst, Secretary of State in history.
A diplomat who is allergic to diplomacy, who spends all this time warmongering and making empty, vacuous statements while covering up for a genocide and also a proxy war in Ukraine.
So who's running foreign policy?
Well, according to the reporting, this was in Politico recently, it was the Israeli-born Amos Hochstein, who was Biden's top envoy for Lebanon.
Plus Brett McGurk, who's worked under every administration going back to George Shelby Bush, who greenlit Israel's assault on Lebanon and Israel's decision to ignore the ceasefire offer that was on the table.
A 21-day ceasefire with Hezbollah, which Nasrallah, we learned after he was killed, had agreed to.
But an Israeli official told NBC News that because Nasrallah refused to drop his insistence, On linking a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon with a ceasefire in Gaza.
That's why Israel decided to kill him.
It's because Nasrallah refused to sell out Palestine.
So therefore, he had to go.
And according to Politico, it was Amos Hochstein and Brett McGark who communicated to Israel that we fully support you in taking the fight, the aggression into Lebanon and wiping out Hezbollah, which means enacting the doctrine of targeting Lebanon civilians because the Israeli strategy as it was in And
the U.S. is being manipulated by either lovers of Israel, like Blinken and Hochstein, or classic neocons like McGurk.
Exactly.
It's just the perfect storm of every single cynical agenda, whether your fidelity is to Israel only or it's to U.S. hegemony.
I mean, these things work in tandem.
And that is the policy that is currently being implemented.
And where are the dissenting voices?
You know, why isn't Bill Burns, who had a reputation coming in as being a diplomat, he wrote a whole book about the importance of the back channel.
That was the name of his memoir.
Where's any voice of, forget conscience, because obviously that doesn't exist at that level, but just long-term stability and rationality.
How is this in anyone's interest to be fueling this catastrophic war that now directly involves Iran?
And we're still waiting for Israel's response to Iran's retaliatory strikes and threatens to get worse.
I mean, so supposedly Bill Burns and Amos Hochstein...
Burns with respect to Hamas and Hochstein with respect to Hezbollah.
We now know that Netanyahu never intended to concede anything in order to achieve a negotiation.
Were Burns and Hochstein dupes used by Netanyahu, or were they part of his mechanism of dealing with other countries?
I don't think any of them are dupes.
Perhaps.
I mean, Amos Hochstein, it's easy to speculate what his agenda is.
He's born in Israel.
He served in the Israeli military.
We now know he encouraged Israel to expand its aggression in Lebanon, so it's pretty clear to see where he comes from.
Was Burns sincere when he was trying to broker a ceasefire, perhaps?
but he's smart enough to know that Netanyahu is not going to agree to it.
I mean, that's – I mean – That was clear from the start and it's been reiterated multiple times with Netanyahu claiming to support a ceasefire but then adding new conditions that he knows Hamas won't accept.
So yes, I mean, it's fair for me to assume that everybody knows exactly what Netanyahu is up to and yet they choose to serve that agenda.
Is there adversity, maybe that's not the right word, but you know what I'm driving at, between Biden and Netanyahu?
Biden's aides have been putting out, you know, Leaks about how frustrated Biden is.
Expletive-laden complaints about Netanyahu.
There's a new book from Bob Woodward which talks about Biden speaking about Netanyahu in disparaging terms.
But what does it matter if Biden at every turn continues to arm Netanyahu, greenlight his expansion of the aggression into Lebanon, and consult with him on how to strike Iran and send U.S. forces to the Middle East and present all that as an attempt to de-escalate?
So somehow sending U.S. military assets, sending young troops off to fight for Israel is an attempt to de-escalate.
So whatever Biden's personal views about Netanyahu, what matters is he's fully on board with his genocidal agenda and has provided cover for it and the ammunition for it at every single turn.
Was Netanyahu ever serious about negotiating for the return of the hostages, given what were his domestic political problems at the time?
No.
No, I mean, we know now, this came out a few months afterwards, that according to the families of the hostages, that Hamas offered Israel to release all the captives if Israel agreed not to attack Gaza.
And Netanyahu immediately rejected that and has continued, with the exception of that one week where he got a ceasefire back in late 2023.
At every single turn, whenever there's been negotiations, Netanyahu...
Does the IDF still occupy Gaza?
Yes.
As an occupying force?
Yes.
And in fact, they're returning to areas that they'd previously withdrawn from.
And as we're speaking in the north, hundreds of thousands of people.
Have been ordered to evacuate.
To go to the south, where there's already over a million people sleeping in horrible conditions and tents.
And now Israel's asking another 400,000 people in the north to join them after previously designating some of these northern areas a safe zone and no longer a conflict zone.
But they're just trying to empty out that northern area.
Finkelstein says that the aim there is to use the North as a permanent buffer zone so that nobody can ever return, which makes sense, especially if you're trying to make Gaza unlivable, which Israel is trying to do.
And a friend of mine who's still in the North, who has been there for a while after being displaced multiple times, he told me he's not going to leave because there's nowhere for them to go in the South.
And his family has decided that they'd rather die in their home.
Or what's left of their home, then, you know, die away from it.
So that's the fate of many people.
Where do they sleep and how do they eat and how do they bathe?
Well, bathing is pretty much non-existent and that's why you have so many diseases going around and skin conditions and other ailments.
Water is very scarce, but sometimes there's deliveries where, you know, you get a meager amount.
And you either sleep in your home if it hasn't been destroyed or in the rubble of your home or in a tent.
How can the IDF find Nasrallah and kill him and find his successor and kill him and they can't find the hostages?
Well, good question.
Good question.
In the case of Nasrallah, it's pretty clear now.
This wasn't just Israel on its own.
Assume that Israel is working with the U.S. and other allies.
And they've been obsessed with killing Nasrallah forever.
And the success they had with the Pager attacks and then killing other Hezbollah officials made Nasrallah more vulnerable.
And a factor that I think is worth stressing here is also the dirty war in Syria, where the U.S. invested billions of dollars, one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive covert war in CIA history.
With the aim of destroying a key member of the Axis of Resistance, and even if regime change couldn't be achieved in Syria, at least bleeding other members of the Axis of Resistance, namely Hezbollah and Iran.
So years of Hezbollah fighting in the dirty war in Syria to protect the country from U.S.-armed and Israel-armed death squads, even though Bashar al-Assad was not overthrown and Hezbollah succeeded there, certainly years of fighting.
Did leave them more vulnerable.
Yes, they gained some important battlefield experience, but certainly they were bled also, as was the point of any proxy war, and made them more exposed to being compromised, I think.
And I think that was a factor here.
And, you know, after so many years of survival, I think Nasrallah knew that he only had so much time on this earth because how long can even a shrewd person like Nasrallah and a really effective person And again, this is a point that Finkelstein has been making.
So it's not a surprise.
And when it comes to the hostages in Gaza, it's a good question.
Maybe the tunnels are just that impenetrable.
And maybe they're so deep in the ground that Israel can't get to them.
And who knows how many other hostages we don't know Israel has killed.
Have been actually killed, because we know that Israel has killed more of its own hostages than its rescued.
So would Netanyahu, if they found the hostages, be a hero for finding them or a goat for having to terminate the hostilities?
Well, certainly Netanyahu could have freed all of them had he agreed to so many opportunities that were on the table from the start.
And he could have freed so many more of them if he had not killed them as part of his indiscriminate bombing campaign.
Inside Gaza.
And yeah, you know, there was one rescue operation in which a few Israeli hostages were killed.
But with that, you know, Israel slaughtered hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
So that's how they've achieved their success is just committing mass murder.
And certainly they're subjecting the remaining Israeli captives, if any, are still alive to just continued danger as long as they continue to prioritize their goals of destroying Gaza and, you know, safeguarding Israeli hegemony in the region by expanding the conflict to other places.
Can I ask you about your gray zone colleague who was arrested by the IDF?
Yes, Jeremy Lafredo has been reporting in Israel-Palestine for many months now.
He's done invaluable work reporting on the Israeli blockade of Gaza, bringing us the voices of some of the people.
They're, you know, supporting the blockade and the cruel, savage things that they said.
And he was in the West Bank, and him along with four other journalists were arrested by Israeli forces.
The four others were freed except for Jeremy.
He's the only one, as far as we know, who stayed in Israeli captivity.
They were subjected to really harsh treatment.
They were hurt.
their phones were seized.
And as we're recording this, And so we're asking everyone to join us and demanding his release.
He's a U.S. citizen being detained for doing journalism, and he's being detained by a U.S.-funded U.S.-armed army.
Has the United States State Department, as far as you know, done anything to facilitate his release, inquire about his whereabouts?
Give him aid and comfort, as it's supposed to do to American citizens captured in foreign countries.
To my knowledge, no, but I hope I'm wrong on that.
There could be some information that I haven't received yet.
I hope I'm wrong.
But regardless, the fact that this could happen speaks to the impunity Israel has when it targets journalists.
Obviously, the main victim of this has been the journalists of Gaza who've been killed.
Deliberately by Israel, by the dozens.
But previously, a few years ago, when Israel killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a journalist with Al Jazeera, also an American citizen, the U.S. shrugged.
I mean, this is part of a longstanding pattern of Israel targeting journalists, whether they're Palestinian or American, and being able to do so with the full backing of its main sponsor in Washington.
I mean, Max told me that more journalists have been killed in one year in Gaza than in 20 years in Vietnam.
Now, it's a different era, but the principle is the same.
Absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely it is.
This is unprecedented.
And that's why, I mean, the death toll when it comes to journalists also reflects the death toll when it comes to women and children and men who are not combatants at all, who are just people in Gaza trying to survive.
That's why we call it a genocide.
When you have that level of civilian death, it's pretty clear what Israel is trying to do.
Just destroy Gaza and kill any civilian who happens to be sheltering in a school or sheltering in a hospital or in their homes.
This is just the most indiscriminate warfare.
I can't call it warfare.
Indiscriminate bombing campaign that I've ever seen in my lifetime.
You want us to do.
If you want to send Chris a picture of him, if you want us to post anything, we have a very large and enthusiastic audience, as you know.
And we'll be happy to do whatever we can to pressure the United States State Department to save this young man.
Thank you, Aaron.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you, Jason.
I know this is a sad subject, but I appreciate your candor.
In addressing it.
My best to Jeremy's family and always to you.
We'll see you again next week.
Thanks, Judge.
Thank you.
Seemed very sad to be discussing that.
I'd be sad to discuss the capture and beating of a colleague as well.
Tomorrow, Tony Schaefer at 8 in the morning.
Professor Gilbert Doctorow, who started this dispute about the tail wagging the dog, and it continues at 9 o 'clock tomorrow.
Colonel Larry Wilkerson at 3 in the afternoon and from midnight in Moscow at 5 in the afternoon Eastern, Pepe Escobar.
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