Jan. 14, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Tuesday, January 14th, 2025. | |
| Ambassador Charles Freeman will be here in just a moment on the latest with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Iran and is a ceasefire in the works. | |
| But first this. | |
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| Ambassador Freeman, welcome here, my dear friend, and thank you for your time. | |
| Ambassador, do we know if Iran has nuclear weapons? | |
| Well, the intelligence agency all say it doesn't. | |
| It did not have a nuclear program. | |
| I think the question now is with the... | |
| Defenses of Iran by Hezbollah, by Hamas stripped away from it, with Syria now without defense against Israeli overflight, will Iran feel obliged to actually build a nuclear weapon? | |
| It has accumulated enough semi-enriched, not fully enriched uranium to build probably four bombs on short notice, but it hasn't done so yet as far as we know. | |
| What would be the basis for an Israeli invasion of Iran or an Israeli attack on what it claims is Iran's nuclear capability, if in fact it's not even close to having a deliverable nuclear weapon? | |
| Well, it's a matter of faith, pushed by Prime Minister Netanyahu. | |
| Many American politicians join him in believing that Iran does have a nuclear weapon, despite the testimony of the intelligence agencies, including Mossad. | |
| There is no question that Iran had a nuclear bomb program under the Shah, but the Shah was overthrown 45 years ago, and the Islamic Republic. | |
| has repeatedly declared that it considers nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction to be religiously forbidden. | |
| It will overcome those scruples if pushed hard enough, and that may be what is happening now. | |
| So the excuse is the fantasy that Iran has a nuclear weapon. | |
| The reality is that, as we can now see, Israel is not only determined to oust the Palestinians from Palestine. | |
| But to establish an empire. | |
| The foreign ministry now shows the religious Zionist map that gives Israel frontage on the Nile, on the Euphrates, includes all of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, parts of Saudi Arabia, and Iraq in a greater Israel. | |
| And Iran is an obstacle to that. | |
| Iran is a contender for dominance in the region. | |
| And Israel is determined to engage in regime change, to change Iran, to subjugate it, to bring it to heel. | |
| So that's the real reason here. | |
| You know, I've seen that map. | |
| We've all seen that map. | |
| Jordan is, of course, just a poodle to the United States, but Saudi Arabia is an extremely wealthy country with a serious military. | |
| Does Netanyahu really think he can take a portion of Saudi Arabia and claim it as... | |
| The religious fanatics that now control Israel aspire to do that. | |
| Nobody should say that anything is impossible. | |
| Northern Saudi Arabia, which is pretty well defended, is a possible target for Israeli aggression. | |
| That, in turn, illustrates why The Abraham Accords have not expanded. | |
| Saudi-Israeli normalization is essentially off the table. | |
| Saudi Arabia is willing to deal pragmatically with Israel, but Israel has delegitimized itself with its genocide in Gaza, with its aggression against Lebanon and Syria, with its land seizures in Syria, | |
| and with its publication of that preposterous map. | |
| Saudi Arabia has indicated that it will not normalize relations with Israel until there's a Palestinian state. | |
| And we know that a Palestinian state is not going to come about except by force, and that would have to be American force. | |
| Is that a fair conclusion? | |
| Probably. I mean, certainly the Israelis from the beginning have made it very clear that they are not prepared to coexist with Palestinians. | |
| I don't see how the United States could bring about a Palestinian state. | |
| Palestinians will have to do that with the support of their fellow Arabs. | |
| And Israel has really now It has extended itself so far beyond what is reasonable. | |
| It has lost the moral high ground internationally. | |
| The usual defense of Israelis against any criticism is to charge anti-Semitism. | |
| That charge has largely lost its sting. | |
| And I think Israel is more and more isolated. | |
| This is not, if you're a religious Zionist and you want to... | |
| The borders of Israel to include as part of Saudi Arabia or Iraq or take all of Syria or Lebanon, this is not good news. | |
| Josh Paul was the director of the Bureau of Political and Military Affairs at the time of his resignation in 2023 and worked at that bureau for three different presidents. | |
| He resigned in protest To the genocide in Gaza, here's what he said just two days ago on 60 Minutes, almost as an entree to the arrival of the Trump administration. | |
| Chris, cut number 10. Most of the bombs come from America. | |
| Most of the technology comes from America. | |
| And all of the fighter jets, all of Israel's fixed-wing fleet comes from America. | |
| There is a linkage between every single bomb that is dropped in Gaza and the U.S. because every single bomb that is dropped is dropped from an American-made plane. | |
| These Israeli airstrikes, you could say, are made in America. | |
| They are. | |
| Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. | |
| There is an interview with the departing American ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, who is an Orthodox Jew, and he reveals that in fact the Biden administration never put any real pressure on Israel, | |
| on Netanyahu, to curtail its genocide. | |
| He also admits that the Biden administration Deliberately on at least two occasions violated U.S. law by making military transfers to Israel without congressional approval. | |
| So we have a case where we have broken international law, and we are liable for that, but we've also violated our own separation of powers and domestic legislation. | |
| This is not a road record to go out on, Mr. Biden. | |
| No, not at all. | |
| If you listen to his... | |
| Right. Right. | |
| Right. Right. | |
| I mean, these violations by the chief law enforcement officer in the federal government are nothing short of profound because they've caused the deaths of innocents. | |
| Thousands, tens of thousands of innocents. | |
| Indeed. And interestingly, that mumbling speech notwithstanding, there is a Gallup poll out. | |
| Published in Semaphore, which is an online magazine. | |
| I just saw it. | |
| The American people think that the country has gone seriously backwards under the Biden administration, both abroad and at home. | |
| And they do not buy the claim that we have strengthened our reputation and standing internationally. | |
| Quite the opposite. | |
| Well, he and his people have been giving these farewell talks, which I suppose is typical. | |
| Jake Sullivan has been all over the map saying how much stronger Ukraine is and weaker Russia is. | |
| But before we get there, reports this morning are that the Israelis and Hamas are very, very close. | |
| To a ceasefire, which would result in the return of about 33 hostages held by Hamas and about 1,000 or 1,200 hostages, Palestinian hostages held by Israel. | |
| It's rather complex, and it's not even reduced to writing yet about where the troops will be and to where in Gaza the... | |
| Palestinians can return. | |
| But the takeaway from it, at least from Haaretz, which you and I look at and a lot of people watching this program look at it, is that this ceasefire was repeatedly rejected by Prime Minister Netanyahu until Steve Whitcoff arrived on the scene. | |
| He is the billionaire real estate investor whom Donald Trump has designated as his envoy for the Middle East, who basically, according to Haaretz, said on a Saturday after sundown or before sundown when the prime minister didn't want to see anybody but reluctantly agreed to see Mr. Witkoff, | |
| take it or leave it, Beebe. | |
| Well, we can, if this happens, which... | |
| It does seem likely. | |
| It will be thanks to the intervention of Donald Trump. | |
| Here we have an outgoing administration which has been conducting feckless negotiations with the Israelis, mostly. | |
| Hamas on several occasions has agreed to American proposed settlements. | |
| They did so six months ago, and at that point Netanyahu upped the ante by demanding to continue to occupy The Philadelphia corridor next to Egypt, which was an offense against the Camp David Accords, | |
| and Egypt is strongly objective. | |
| So we have here a case where the outgoing administration allowed someone from the incoming administration to take part in the talks, to add credibility, and that man evidently, on Trump's instructions, | |
| bullied the famous bully Netanyahu. | |
| Into an agreement, or so we are told. | |
| Netanyahu has a problem now with his religious fanatic cabinet, which is against disagreement and always has been. | |
| But I want to take a moment to say that I think Donald Trump handled this really rather adroitly. | |
| He did two things. | |
| First, he issued an absolutely outrageous statement about turning Gaza into hell as though it wasn't already. | |
| And second, he played Jeffrey Sachs' video in which Sachs, speaking for many Americans who resent Israel's ability to push us around, declared that Israel was just leading us by the nose and it should be unacceptable. | |
| Why did he publish that? | |
| Why did Trump publish that? | |
| Because he wanted to show Netanyahu that he was not going to be pushed around. | |
| And what he's just done is, as I said, the bully has bullied the bully, and he's reestablished some sort of leverage with Netanyahu. | |
| What he will use it for, we don't know. | |
| What the quid pro quo was, we do not know. | |
| We can hope that it was not a promise to extend the war to Iran, which might have been the case. | |
| That is something Mr. Netanyahu has very badly wanted. | |
| But in any event, it was a tense meeting, apparently. | |
| And Mr. Whitcoff, who is used to the rough and tumble of New York real estate operations, apparently was appropriately tough. | |
| Yes. Jeff Sachs was nothing short of brilliant and may very well have changed the course of future events. | |
| He referred in that clip, it's only about a two-and-a-half-minute clip, From a 90-minute speech with Q&A involving students at Cambridge University, he referred to Netanyahu as a deep, dark SOB who has led America into all of its fruitless, | |
| immoral Middle Eastern wars, a statement with which I think you are no doubt in agreement. | |
| Are Israel and Iran preparing To strike each other as we speak, Ambassador. | |
| The latest report, again in the Israeli press, not in Haaretz, for which I have great regard, it is really one of the world's few remaining great newspapers, is that the 1,000 | |
| long-range drones stealthed and able to carry out kamikaze drone attacks. | |
| I've just been delivered to the Iranian military. | |
| So the Iranians are girding their loins for a battle. | |
| The Israelis have not ceased to threaten Iran. | |
| And as I indicated earlier, those threats are sufficiently credible now that Iran may indeed actually build the bomb that it's been charged with having, but which it hasn't had. | |
| And this is a terrible development if that occurs. | |
| I don't know whether there will be a war or not, but both sides are clearly preparing for one. | |
| I can't resist, even though it's about Ukraine, running this clip of Jake Sullivan and his farewell tour of the Sunday talk shows. | |
| This is actually from two days ago on January 12th. | |
| The argument, I think, is absurd, but I'm happy to hear you. | |
| Comment on it. | |
| Chris, cut number one. | |
| Where across the globe could you point and say the United States is safer because of what we did here? | |
| Well, I'd start by saying our alliances are stronger than we found them four years ago. | |
| They're stronger than they've been in decades. | |
| NATO is more powerful, purposeful, and bigger. | |
| Our alliances in the Asia-Pacific are at all-time highs. | |
| And our adversaries and competitors are weaker across the board. | |
| Russia's weaker. | |
| Iran's weaker. | |
| China is weaker. | |
| And... All the while, we kept America out of war. | |
| So I think the American people are safer, and the country is better off than we were four years ago. | |
| And we're handing all that off to the next team, as well as having the engines of American power humming our economy, our technology, our defense industrial base, our supply chains. | |
| So the United States is in a stronger, more secure position, and our competitors and adversaries are weaker and under pressure. | |
| I think that's the main... | |
| Where has he been the past four years? | |
| I would recommend, to those who haven't seen it, Peter Beinart. | |
| Takedown of this nonsense. | |
| It is not believed by the American people. | |
| If Jake Sullivan actually believes it, that is very sad. | |
| But I suspect he's just a flack. | |
| How detrimental to the effective prosecution of American foreign policy has been the unilateral decision by President Biden not even to speak with President Putin. | |
| Well, this is crippling, of course. | |
| I don't know how you can possibly conduct diplomacy without talking to people. | |
| One of the more encouraging things about the incoming Trump administration is that it has made it clear that it will engage in dialogue with Mr. Putin, among others, with Xi Jinping. | |
| You don't gain anything by... | |
| Not having contact with your adversary on the battlefield, if you lose contact with the enemy, you're subject to surprise. | |
| In diplomacy, if you deliberately sever contact with your adversary or your opponent or the other side in a disagreement, you have basically engaged in unilateral disarmament. | |
| This is utterly ineffective. | |
| And I think here there's something to be learned from the Chinese, actually. | |
| In two wars that they have fought, 1962, a border war with India, 1979, and again, a border war with Vietnam. | |
| On each occasion, they left their embassies open in New Delhi and in Hanoi. | |
| They did not withdraw them. | |
| They understood that it is precisely when you have tension with another country that you most need to keep lines of communication open. | |
| The Biden administration has pretended to do that, but it has basically, in the case of Moscow, Tony Blinken, Anthony Blinken has never been there during his four years as Secretary of State. | |
| He's ricocheted off his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, at international conferences. | |
| Ten-minute encounters, no substance. | |
| Mr. Biden has had a meeting with Mr. Putin, and that was it. | |
| There's been no follow-up. | |
| The fact that the Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, actually talked with his counterpart on one occasion with big news. | |
| This is no way to conduct foreign policy. | |
| And I would say the American people, again, going back to the Gallup poll that I cited earlier, don't buy the thesis that there has been any kind of diplomacy that was effective at all on really much of any issue during the Biden administration. | |
| One of our viewers just writes, imagine a State Department run by Ambassador Freeman and Professor Sachs. | |
| No, thanks. | |
| Well, I breathe, I hope. | |
| Ambassador Freeman, it's a pleasure, my dear friend, as it always is. | |
| Thank you very much for joining us. | |
| Thank you for letting me pick your brain. | |
| Thank you for letting me veer off topic from Israel into Ukraine. | |
| And we'll look forward to seeing you again next week. | |
| All the best. | |
| Keep well and keep up the good work. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Right back at you. | |
| And coming up at 8.45 this morning, the aforementioned Jeffrey Sachs. | |
| And at 12 noon, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. | |
| Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. |
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