April 9, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Wednesday, April 9th, 2025. | |
| My dear friend Max Blumenthal joins us now. | |
| Max, thank you for joining us. | |
| Thanks for accommodating my schedule. | |
| I have a lot of topics to talk to you about, but I want to start off with a clip that I've run a couple of times this week, but I've been looking forward to running it in front of you. | |
| This is President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Oval Office on Monday after they had met for three hours should be pretty easy to decide which of them is ignorant and which of them is lying. | |
| Cut number 10. Do you think blocking humanitarian aid is also an effective pressure? | |
| Well, you know how I feel about the Gaza Strip. | |
| I think it's an incredible piece of important real estate. | |
| The level of death on the Gaza Strip is just incredible. | |
| I've said it. | |
| I don't understand why Israel ever gave it up. | |
| Israel owned it. | |
| It wasn't this man, so I can say it. | |
| He wouldn't have given it up. | |
| I know him very well. | |
| There's no way. | |
| They took oceanfront property and they gave it to people for peace. | |
| How did that work out? | |
| Not good. | |
| They gave it away for good intention and it didn't work out that way. | |
| I think what the president talked about is, first of all, to give people a choice. | |
| Gaza, Gazans were closed in. | |
| Any other place, including in arenas of battle, I mean, whether it's Ukraine or Syria or any other place, people could leave. | |
| Gaza was the only place where they locked them in. | |
| We didn't lock them in. | |
| They're locked in. | |
| And what is wrong with giving people a choice? | |
| Now, we've been talking, including over lunch, about some countries, I won't go into them right now, that are saying, you know, if Gazans want to leave, we want to take them in. | |
| And I think this is the right thing to do. | |
| It's going to take years to rebuild Gaza. | |
| In the meantime, people can have an option. | |
| The president has a vision. | |
| Countries are responding to that vision. | |
| We're working on it. | |
| I hope we'll have good news for you. | |
| Netanyahu had a chance to bail out Trump's ignorance, but he compounded it with lies. | |
| Well, the ignorance may have been tactical. | |
| I mean, I'm just worn out fact-checking Trump on all of this. | |
| And we might have to start taking him at his word about his intentions for Gaza. | |
| He entered office during his first term, portraying himself as a kind of a non-interventionist, not because he cared about the lives of Arabs and Muslims, because Americans had suffered. | |
| So much, especially in red parts of the country, fighting the wars of choice of George W. Bush. | |
| And now Trump is pledging to commit apparently American men and materiel to turn Gaza into what he calls a freedom zone, where the US will own Gaza. | |
| It sounds like what the US did in Mogadishu, which didn't work out very well for the United States. | |
| This stands in contravention to the whole America First agenda, and of course he's lying about why the Gaza Strip is in the situation it's in. | |
| It's in a situation it's in because of perpetual Israeli occupation, siege, starvation of Gaza by managing everything down to the caloric intake of each Gaza resident. | |
| That's what Israel's been doing. | |
| So he hands it off to Netanyahu, who is a professional liar who could sell a dirty diaper to a garbage can, or at least he thinks he can. | |
| And he declares that we're not the ones blocking Gaza. | |
| Really? Who's blocking it? | |
| I guess Egypt is to blame for the whole thing, but what they've done here is | |
| or it will cease to be a Jewish and democratic state, and it will just have to be a Jewish apartheid state. | |
| That was... | |
| The reasoning of Meir Kahane, who was banned from the Israeli Knesset because he was putting forward this idea, but now the idea is so mainstream, the U.S. president is putting it forward. | |
| And I can tell you, the whole pro-Israel lobbying world is celebrating Donald Trump for mainstreaming that idea. | |
| You talk about taking Trump at his word. | |
| Here's his latest word. | |
| On what should become of Gaza, the United States Peace Force, a.k.a. | |
| U.S. Marines. | |
| Cut number one. | |
| Well, you know how I feel about the Gaza Strip. | |
| I think it's an incredible piece of important real estate. | |
| And I think it's something that we would be involved in, but, you know, having a peace force like the United States there, controlling and owning the Gaza Strip would be a good thing. | |
| Because right now, all it is is for years and years, all I hear about is killing and Hamas and problems. | |
| And if you take the people, the Palestinians, and move them around to different countries, and you have plenty of countries that will do that. | |
| And you really have a freedom zone. | |
| You call it the freedom zone. | |
| A free zone. | |
| A zone where people aren't going to be killed every day. | |
| That's a hell of a place. | |
| Again, he doesn't know what he's talking about, Max. | |
| I know you're sick and tired of fact-checking him, and maybe this is strategic, or maybe it's just dumb. | |
| Well, where's everybody going to go? | |
| Right. Establish this freedom zone. | |
| In which his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has economic interests. | |
| He's invested in a real estate firm which has already expressed interest in building seaside property in Gaza. | |
| Where are they all going to go? | |
| Trump has proposed a kind of Nazi-like Madagascar plan. | |
| Will they be sent to a place like Somaliland or Puntland, which are these kind of imperial carve-outs out of Somalia? | |
| But they haven't really accepted it. | |
| They're going to go to Europe? | |
| Refugees who are traumatized, suffered through incredible trauma that even many Europeans didn't suffer during World War II, and they're just going to be dumped there? | |
| How's that going to work out? | |
| I mean, it might be appropriate given the level of support Europe has given to Netanyahu's genocide in Gaza, but it's not going to work out well. | |
| Europe won't accept it. | |
| Egypt and Jordan? | |
| Netanyahu put them on the hook to accept Palestinians as the price of maintaining an ethno-supremacist Zionist state in the heart of the Arab Muslim Middle East, and they rejected it too as destabilizing and, of course, | |
| unfair to Palestinians. | |
| King Abdullah, if he accepted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and allowed Gaza to be taken, he already has on his hands 80% of his population is Palestinian. | |
| Do you think they would accept that? | |
| No. Totally destabilizing to the Middle East. | |
| So what Trump is putting forward is something that's unacceptable to all parties. | |
| What Trump won't do is force Netanyahu's hand for a ceasefire to end this nightmare or at least force him to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip where it's approaching famine. | |
| But I should say, I'm sure you have more clips to play. | |
| This meeting didn't go very well for Netanyahu. | |
| Well, I wanted to raise that with you next, because the BBC and The Economist have reported that, that Netanyahu thought he was going to get Trump verbally to attack President Erdogan of Turkey, and that he would agree to BB's grand war plans against Iran, | |
| and Trump said no to both. | |
| The alternate theory is that Netanyahu's supposed gloom and doom as he left the White House was just a head fan. | |
| Well, the fact that Israel's now threatening to attack Iran unilaterally, which has always been their tactic to manipulate the United States into doing the attack on their behalf, | |
| suggests to me that it wasn't a head fake and that Netanyahu... | |
| Not happy coming out of the meeting. | |
| Also, if you can zoom in on Netanyahu's face when Trump states that there will be direct talks with Iran in Oman, a place of Iran's choosing, Netanyahu is clearly irked, | |
| if not on the verge of descending into a petulant frenzy in front of the entire Washington press corps when Trump surprised him with that news. | |
| Netanyahu entered the meeting under the impression that Iran had rejected direct negotiations. | |
| And then he finds out on the spot that Steve Witkoff is on his way to Oman to meet with the Iranian foreign minister, Aradji. | |
| And they're going to meet on April 12th. | |
| And this may be one of the most important meetings in the recent history of U.S.-Iranian relations. | |
| I don't think it's one where Netanyahu believes war will emerge, which is why you see this threat. | |
| Iran is also offering Trump economic incentives. | |
| It has a lot more to offer than Israel. | |
| You saw Trump in the meeting refuse Netanyahu's demand that he drop the 18% tariff, which has been slapped on Israel, which is a higher tariff. | |
| Netanyahu has slapped on many other countries, and Trump said, well, we're already giving you $4 billion a year, so congratulations on that. | |
| Kind of an insult, like cutting Netanyahu down the side. | |
| The entire issue, of course, has changed, but it has nothing to do with Netanyahu. | |
| You make excellent points that Netanyahu was humiliated and that his trip to the United States was counterproductive. | |
| Two of our colleagues, Gilbert Doctorow and Pepe Escobar, have offered on this show that it was the Russians, it was our friend Sergei Lavrov, who put together the Iranian foreign minister and Steve Witkoff. | |
| That adds another level to this. | |
| Does Donald Trump owe a favor to Vladimir Putin by putting together this face-to-face meeting? | |
| The hell with Netanyahu. | |
| Without a doubt, a U.S. war or attack on Iran would have slowed or completely sabotaged all momentum on Ukraine-Russia talks, which are already lagging, possibly because of the There's also the issue of the tariffs. | |
| If the U.S. were to attack Iran, whatever the outcome, there is no question the global economy would enter into a possible death spiral. | |
| A massive blow to the global economy. | |
| Iran would attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. | |
| There would be attacks on oil facilities of what I call the Axis of Assistance, the collaborationist Gulf states, UAE, Saudi Arabia. | |
| The oil markets would be in absolute chaos. | |
| And that is the warning that Tucker Carlson issued directly to Donald Trump. | |
| Tucker Carlson has access to the White House. | |
| He has access to Trump's inner circle. | |
| He obviously knows that they were very close to an attack. | |
| And he reminded them that with all the chaos and economic uncertainty because of Trump's tariffs on the whole world, adding Iran into the mix would be almost politically suicidal. | |
| and he's right. | |
| I think... | |
| And Iran's foreign ministry is very talented. | |
| They're not going to blow up this meeting or walk away, although the terms that the U.S. is putting forward, putting on the table, are not very favorable to Iran. | |
| Did the very face of Prime Minister Netanyahu's October 7th PR campaign, was that person exposed as a fabulist, as a person who made up entirely what he claimed he saw? | |
| Well, this is an incredible story and it feels almost like an afterthought or a footnote after we've spent so much energy and time at the gray zone exposing the lies and deceptions. | |
| That were used to manufacture consent for genocide in Gaza that came out of the October 7th attacks. | |
| And all of the viewers of this show will be familiar with the 40 beheaded babies lies, the lies about babies hung on laundry lines, a fetus cut from a pregnant woman, the Hamas mass sexual assault hoax, which was spread most prominently by the billionaire lean-in feminist Sheryl Sandberg. | |
| In her hoax documentary, Screams Before Silence. | |
| But now it is coming apart in Israeli media. | |
| Channel 13 in Israel was going to air an expose by their chief investigative correspondent, Rami Drucker, who is one of the most prominent journalists in Israel in the Hebrew language, exposing someone named Rami Davidian. | |
| As a fraud, a complete fabulist. | |
| He's like the most famous hero of October 7th in Israel, who claimed that he rescued 750 Israelis from the Nova Electronic Music Festival from Hamas attackers, and who then appeared as the star of Sheryl Sandberg's hoax documentary, | |
| claiming he found women tied to trees who had been viciously sexually abused by Hamas and were then killed. | |
| Over 20 of them. | |
| I think 30. And according to Raviv Drucker, everything that Rami Davidian said from start to finish was invented. | |
| Everything was a lie. | |
| He lit the torch at Israel's Independence Day festivities. | |
| He was featured even in the UN report by Priti Patel, the UN rapporteur on sexual violence. | |
| He's made loads of money on speaking tours, and he's a complete fraud, just like the entire story Israel told about October 7th. | |
| And guess what happened with this report? | |
| It was censored after one hour of review by Channel 13's CEO because of quote-unquote public pressure. | |
| Basically, the narrative couldn't be allowed to be destroyed in the eyes of the Israeli public because while it's made up that there were 40 beheaded babies or any beheaded babies on October 7th, Israel is currently beheading Muslims. | |
| How does this, if at all, impair the standing of Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose legal troubles just keep mounting? | |
| Well, it doesn't. | |
| It doesn't. | |
| I mean, in Israel, there are various scandals around Netanyahu that don't really cut to the heart of the matter. | |
| Like the Qatar Gate scandal, for example. | |
| That two of his top aides were paid by Qatar to paint Qatar as a great negotiator and undercut Egypt and spread propaganda and troll farms. | |
| They were paid to do it. | |
| The whole Israeli Hebrew media and the U.S. media, without being paid or incentivized, lied about October 7th and has lied about everything else while the Israeli army is lying about executing 15 medics. | |
| in Gaza who were going to rescue 20 children who were trapped. | |
| And then it comes out that they didn't take one of the medics I | |
| I mean, the real scandal is right in our faces, which is that the entire war is based on a lie, and it's a lie that enabled genocide. | |
| So I look at all of Netanyahu's corruption trials as... | |
| Kind of a sideshow. | |
| What really will determine Netanyahu's legacy is whether the U.S. I think April 12th is a decisive day for Netanyahu when the U.S. meets with Iran in Oman because Netanyahu's whole legacy, he staked his legacy on ending what he believes is the Iranian threat to Israel through regime change in Iran by manipulating the United States into attacking Iran on behalf Here's | |
| the president of the Red Crescent discussing the body of the boy on whom the telephone was found. | |
| Refat Redwan was one of 15 killed. | |
| His phone was found with his body and he recorded the whole event. | |
| His last words before being shot. | |
| Forgive me, mom. | |
| I just wanted to help people. | |
| I wanted to save lives. | |
| Was the tape from the iPhone on that boy's body? | |
| Played on Israeli television? | |
| Israelis are aware of it now and actually hundreds of medics who work in Israel are demanding charges for the soldiers. | |
| I would say the majority of Jewish Israelis could care less if these soldiers get charged. | |
| But they're aware of it and there's a segment of Israeli society that is outraged and it was truly outrageous what took place. | |
| I mean, not only did they... | |
| One by one, execute them. | |
| The soldiers attempted to bury. | |
| They called in a bulldozer to bury their ambulance to cover up the crime scene. | |
| And now, through a discovered iPhone, we see not only the sadism of the crime, The kind of crimes that have been committed day after day after day, usually without the kind of visual evidence we got here, | |
| but also the heroism of these rescuers. | |
| What we're seeing in Gaza is the best of humanity, again and again. | |
| Whether it's this medic whose last words were an apology to his mother for him following his conviction to rescue people to his death at a young age, to the journalist Hossam Shabbat, 24 years old. | |
| Covered the genocide from start to finish. | |
| Went places I would be terrified to go under fire and was executed deliberately. | |
| Assassinated by Israel after returning to the battlefront after Israel broke the ceasefire. | |
| They called him a terrorist. | |
| They openly took credit for assassinating him. | |
| And I can name so many other people who just fearlessly sacrifice their lives to save others in Gaza or tell the story of what happened. | |
| And then you have these Israeli soldiers who really represent the worst of humanity, who will never face punishment for slaughtering people who are just going to rescue. | |
| I mean, these are Netanyahu's willing executioners who maybe six months ago were school teachers, lawyers, and shopkeepers. | |
| No? This is the civilian army, right? | |
| Yep. Yeah, it's called Hitler's Willing Execution. | |
| And I don't necessarily agree, I don't know if I agree with the thesis of that book as it applies to Germany. | |
| You had like the Einsatzgruppen and the SS who were highly ideological, who carried out hideous crimes, but many soldiers in the Wehrmacht were not even necessarily aware of the horrors that might | |
| have been taken. | |
| Right. Where indoctrination takes place from age four on, | |
| where military service is compulsory. | |
| Everything in Israeli society, your credibility, the respect you get, even your ability to enter nightclubs is contingent on your service in the army. | |
| And that is an army that has been an occupation army for well over five decades, even longer, and has been continuously at war with all of Israel's neighbors. | |
| For over seven decades. | |
| And so you do have a civilian soldier population. | |
| You can't distinguish whether they're civilians or soldiers that are willing executioners and will drop their job when they get the call to go into Gaza and commit these horrific crimes and then go back home just like a half hour away and kiss their wives. | |
| Last subject matter, Max. | |
| Is Mark Zuckerberg hiring XIDF killers to work at Facebook or at Meta, the parent company? | |
| Yeah, at the Gray Zone, we republished a piece by a tech expert, someone who follows closely Israeli infiltration of the tech industry in Silicon Valley. | |
| And he goes by Nate Bear on Twitter, runs a substack called Do Not Panic. | |
| And he reported that over 100, this is his analysis, over 100 Meta employees, including the head of AI policy at Meta, are former Israeli army soldiers, including, you know, at the officer level. | |
| And this really sheds light on why Meta and Facebook have been taking such a biased approach to censoring content. | |
| Particularly censoring pro-Palestinian content or you could call it anti-genocide content. | |
| The AI policy chief enlisted in the Israeli army in 2009 by choice under a program that enables non-Israeli Jews to fight. | |
| So this is a volunteer foreign fighter named Shira Anderson who's now heading up AI policy and we have to ask, What role Meta's AI is playing in Israel's genocide? | |
| Mark Zuckerberg, after October 7th, signed a public letter declaring that Meta stands with Israel. | |
| He signed along with other big tech AI warlords like Palantir, the ultra-Zionist Alex Karp, as well as Peter Thiel and other figures. | |
| They're all invested and mobbed up with the Israeli genocide machine. | |
| And now we can see how infiltrated they are. | |
| And these are our digital commons. | |
| We don't have a Hyde Park speaker's corner or public space where our debates are taking place. | |
| They're all taking place in these privately owned Silicon Valley platforms that are comprehensively infiltrated by Israeli operatives. | |
| So this to me seems like | |
| case of, I don't know. | |
| Thank you, Max. | |
| The dreadful stuff we're discussing, but it needs to be aired. | |
| Thank you for all the research you do. | |
| Thank you for your patience, fact-checking, and as always, thanks for coming on the show. | |
| All my best. | |
| Thanks a lot, Judge. | |
| Of course. | |
| Coming up tomorrow at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, Professor Glenn Deason. | |
| At two o'clock in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and at three o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer. |
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