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June 12, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:57
Max Blumenthal : Is Israel Aiding Ukraine?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, June 12, 2025.
Apologies for the delay.
Apologies for the slightly different look.
The usual internet gremlins, and thanks to producer Chris, we've overcome them.
Max Blumenthal is here with us today, but first this.
The team at Palantir's booth was clearly on edge.
Almost every time a reporter asked them, About the new spying contracts they'd raked in under Trump, Palantir's staff would instantaneously call conference security and DC Metro Police.
I didn't ask about your CEO saying that he kills tons of people in Gaza.
I didn't ask them any questions.
Palantir even called the cops on me, simply for filming their attempts to get other reporters ejected.
Though Palantir demanded my ouster from the AI Expo.
I was allowed to re-enter for just long enough to attend a panel that amounted to 30 minutes of relentless pro-Israel pablum.
It featured the Vice President of the Right Wing Heritage Foundation, Victoria Coates.
Coates was joined on the panel by Amos Yadlin, the former Director of Military Intelligence for Israel, who's credited with loosening his country's rules on targeting the residents of Gaza and Lebanon.
by designating them as quote-unquote the terrorists'non-dangerous neighbor rather than as civilians.
I attempted to question Yadlin about his role in setting the stage for Israel's ongoing bloodbath in Gaza, where a majority of the almost 60,000 dead are women, children, and the elderly.
Mr. Yadlin, can I ask a question?
I'm Max Blumenthal from The Grey Zone.
You were the subject of a New York Review of Books article about how you and Asa Kasher helped loosen the principles of distinction on killing civilians.
And I wanted to ask you how you see your role in the current genocide where thousands of children are being killed.
Did you help inspire the genocide?
What's a genocide?
What's the definition of a genocide?
The deliberate attempt to exterminate a people.
What Israel's doing.
It's also a holocaust.
A holocaust.
My grandparents are holocaust.
And you're supporting the new holocaust.
You're supporting the new holocaust.
Hey, get her away from me.
I just asked the speaker a question.
Get this holocaust supporter away from me.
I'm a holocaust survivor.
And supporter.
And you're continuing the holocaust.
You're continuing the Holocaust.
You're continuing the Holocaust.
Tens of thousands of slaughtered children.
Yeah, it's ethnic cleansing.
It's what's happening in Gaza.
What's interesting here is how few reporters are actually at this place when you have the heads of intelligence, the AI warlords that are getting the biggest government contracts.
You have Palantir, which is stock is surging and it just...
It has a massive contract from the Trump administration to take Americans' data.
And you have the former head of Israeli military intelligence.
You have the Israeli embassy, the Ukrainian embassy, Taiwanese officials, and there's hardly any reporters here.
And one of the few reporters, the few reporters who are inside who are asking questions of any of these AI warlords, foreign governments.
that are committing genocide like Israel are being escorted out by police and having their badges taken away.
Thank you.
Thank you.
What was going on there, Max?
Sorry, was there a question?
Oh, yeah.
What was going on there?
What were you trying to do there?
And why did they throw you out?
And why weren't there any other reporters there?
Yeah, what was it and why did they let you in and then throw you out?
They didn't like your questions and therefore they're going to throw a bona fide journalist out?
Well, you would have thought there would have been hundreds of reporters descending on this conference.
of the Special Competitive Studies Group, which was founded by Google co-founder Eric Schmidt, and brings together a who's who of military contractors comprising basically the future of the U.S. national security state.
You had the head of the Pentagon Joint Chiefs at this conference.
You had the chairman of the Navy on stage with Palantir's chief lobbyist, Mike Gallagher.
Palantir, Meta, Google, all of the creators of the spying and death tech architecture of the future were on hand, along with a group called Rhombus Power, which is marketing generative AI, which claims that it can predict major world events, allowing intelligence to carry out basically future warfare that predicts the future.
Palantir was front and center at this conference, and the conference took place about two to three days after the New York Times published a front-page expose on the Trump administration, giving major contracts to Palantir to integrate the private data of Americans across government departments through two programs called Foundry and Gotham, which many MAGA supporters were even calling a social credit system, a violation of privacy.
They also have contracts with ICE.
They have contracts with the IAEA, which I hope we can talk about in a minute, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Palantir is basically becoming the backbone of the entire Western transatlantic national security state, and they're active in Gaza.
So the few reporters that were there at this conference, and we're talking about...
We're very interested, as soon as they walked in the expo hall, in trying to talk to someone at Palantir's booth.
And I watched as one reporter named Jessica Lamersurier from France 24, which is like France's version of the BBC, walked up and started.
Trying to ask questions, they immediately called the cops and conference security.
And then Palantir staff, I mean we're talking about high-level figures at Palantir, stormed out of this booth which had no recording signs over it and fingered me to the cops as well.
And I was taken out of the exhibition hall simply for filming this interaction.
So I talked my way back in and then was later thrown out because I tried to ask a question.
Of Israel's former military intelligence chief, Amos Yadlin, who was on stage for this ridiculous pro-Israel seminar.
They called it a fireside chat.
And no one asked any real questions of him.
He was treated as some sort of expert commentator, as if he hadn't been deeply involved in establishing the groundwork for the current Gaza genocide by publishing influential Papers and documents loosening the rules on Israel's ability to target civilians intentionally and releasing Israel from any Geneva Convention's obligations.
So when I tried to ask him about that, an aggressive Zionist fanatic cry-bully woman started shrieking at me that I didn't understand what genocide was.
And because she would not unattach herself from me, I was finally removed from that conference, stripped of my badge.
Basically, very few reporters were left standing by the end of that conference who were willing to ask critical questions in even acceptable forums.
As Palantir, the group that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, announced about two weeks ago, would now house centrally the data acquired by warrantless spying on Americans so the DIA, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI can just go to Palantir and get this stuff.
They don't have to go to the actual industry.
that produced it.
Do I have that right?
It sounds right to me.
What Palantir aims to do, according to its CEO, Alex Karp, is to...
To help governments and clients, they have clients also in the for-profit healthcare sector, find things that they couldn't ordinarily find through the integration of data.
And this can involve some very extra constitutional means by going outside the courts and integrating data between various departments and allowing some central example.
But what it can also do is algorithmically single out individuals based on their past and their data as potential criminals or terrorists to be targeted with things like Palantir's Maven.
targeting system, which is used across the entire US armed It could also be used algorithmically to hit people with warrants or tax audits.
The IRS is relying on Palantir.
As I mentioned, the IAEA is relying on it.
And Israel has apparently used Palantir's This is something that the CEO of Palantir, a fanatical Zionist named Alex Karp, is proud of.
When he was publicly protested at a public forum, he said, well, yeah, we are killing people in Gaza, but most of them are terrorists.
And how do we know most of them are terrorists?
Well, they won't tell us.
That's what I would have wanted to have.
Ask Palantir.
How do you determine who's a terrorist and who isn't, especially when Israel doesn't seem to care?
And I should tell you, you know, since I was kicked out of that conference and since I published my video, a high-level Palantir staffer, I think he's director of strategy, named Eliano Yunus, has been direct messaging me on Twitter X, expressing outrage and deacombs
So these appear to be some very thin-skinned individuals, even as their CEO runs around boasting about killing people.
And it's even said that two-thirds of the major events that you see take place within the West relating to, for example, the war on terror can be credited to Palantir.
But they won't answer questions.
And they seem to want to control all reporting about them.
Switch gears a little bit, except at the end of this segment, I have to say that again, my hat is off to you for your personal courage.
Now, I watched the whole clip, which is about 13 minutes long.
We obviously edited it down.
And again, I commend your grasp of the knowledge here and your personal courage to get right in the faces of these creeps.
Does Iran have Israeli nuclear secrets as seems to have come out this week?
Well, that's what they say.
And sorry, I've been looking at the wrong camera here because we're on a different platform than usual.
StreamYard's been down.
I don't know if the Mossad took it down because they're so afraid of the judge going live.
Such a coincidence that at the moment that the U.S. is evacuating personnel from its embassies, like low-level embassy staffers are being called back from Jimmy John's off the base to evacuate, in expectation of some supposed Israeli strike, stream yard goes down as well.
So I guess we won't be doing a gray zone stream later today.
To your question, Iran's
Mossad documents, documents pertaining to Netanyahu's health, and particularly to Israel's secret nuclear program, were taken.
Apparently, from the Sorek nuclear reactor, which is Israel's announced civilian reactor, constructed in 1958, and brought to Iran.
They say it took many months to transfer the documents and process them, and now they know what's in them.
And they have provided a summary through Iranian media of what's in these documents.
And today, for the first time, we actually got to see some of the raw documents pertaining to the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
And the reason that I think these documents draw.
The IAEA passed a very stringent and clearly politicized anti-Iran resolution, which claims that Iran has not been abiding by its obligations.
Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, we've covered this extensively with Gareth Porter in the past, who is one of the foremost scholars on the issue of Iran's nuclear program and the Israeli-US attack on Iran, many of these allegations that are recycled in the IAEA resolution, Gareth has sourced to Israeli fabrications and
And now we see, with some of these raw documents that have come out, that Israel has had secret communications with Rafael Grossi, who is now the chairman of the agency, since before he was director.
Before he was Director General.
So back in 2018, in September 2018, Yukio Amano was Director General and he became ill mysteriously and then died a few months later.
And during that period, there was a big lobbying push and competition among other staffers and figures associated with the agency.
Like Grossi, who is from Argentina, and they needed to get the Americans on their side.
And one of the documents shows that the Israeli representative at the time for the IAEA, whose name was Mirav Zafari Odiz, was soliciting private meetings with Grossi, apparently to groom him, as he vied for the leadership.
And then he eventually became the leader.
He has passed several anti-Iran resolutions or resolutions that were very harsh against Iran, first in February this year and then this week.
He's also said that he's refused to address Israel's secret reactor, its weaponized program.
At Dimona and said, well, because Israel didn't sign on to the NPT, we can't deal with that at the IAEA, which is exactly what Israel wants to hear.
But meanwhile, making all these picayune allegations against Iran, which are helping make the case for a Israeli-U.S.
bombing campaign.
And that's exactly what Merav Zafari Odi's So I think these documents are significant.
What we haven't seen, which I think is the most explosive allegation Iran has made, we haven't seen the documents so far, is that IAEA had actually provided Israel with information on who Iran's top nuclear scientists were.
Their identities.
And in 2019, I don't know if you remember, Netanyahu delivered a PowerPoint presentation claiming Iran was weaponizing its nuclear program.
And for the first time, this was in Israel, in front of a PowerPoint.
He spoke the name Mosin Fakhrizadeh for the first time during that presentation.
A year later, the Mossad assassinated Fakhrizadeh with a remote-controlled drone machine gun smuggled into the country, attacking his convoy.
And so now Iran, with the help of these documents from Israel, is making the claim, putting two and two together, that Israel got this information about who these scientists were.
through the IAEA.
That is an explosive claim and would, if proven, discredit the IAEA as a honest broker in this situation.
And already Iran has announced plans for a new nuclear facility in response to this harsh resolution from the IAEA.
The state's getting ready to attack Iran.
I don't think so.
I think what Trump is doing, but I mean, I could be proven wrong and embarrassed in a few minutes.
We don't know what's going to happen, but I think that Trump is using Israel in its traditional role as kind of the mad dog.
in the region to intimidate Iran in order to weaken Iran's negotiating position and get it to agree to temporary enrichment of uranium at some lower level like 3.67 because Iran is refusing to compromise on that point.
So it looks like Trump is staging all of this.
As a negotiating tactic, as a pressure tactic, it's not going to work.
Iran seems to be very militarily confident and also diplomatically confident if you look at its jousting with the IAEA.
And Israel itself has – it appears they have concluded for – I think the head of the Shin Bet spoke to Netanyahu today and said that it would be impossible.
to dismantle Iran's nuclear program without U.S. assistance.
I think it would be impossible to do without the use of thermonuclear weapons, at least tactical nuclear weapons.
Channel 12, Israeli outlet, published a piece a week and a half ago by the head of the Institute for National Security Studies, which consults for the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
He concluded that Israeli strikes Even with U.S. assistance, would only delay Iran's nuclear program from producing a weapon by six months to one year.
So I don't think Israel can achieve anything other than regional warfare.
And Steve Witkoff, according to Axios, this is Trump's negotiator, has told Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
That Iran could cause massive casualties inside Israel in any retaliation for an Israeli strike.
Kind of warning, telling them, especially Tom Cotton, who's just a complete Israeli tool, to kind of tone down the rhetoric.
Preparing to order an attack, notwithstanding the evidence that the retaliation or even the pre-attack would be catastrophic for Israel.
Well, Netanyahu's life mission is to drag the U.S. into a war with Iran.
And he would certainly be willing to sacrifice a segment of the Israeli public in order to achieve that goal.
You can see what he would do.
I mean, he's the ultimate cry bully.
He would attack, attack.
Then, if Iran actually manages to do damage, and remember, Iran missed Mossad headquarters by just a few meters during True Promise 2, then he would tell the U.S., we are existentially threatened.
We will all die tomorrow.
This will be another Holocaust unless you do something, and the pressure that would be brought to bear on Trump would be unprecedented.
That's a scenario I think Netanyahu would want to entertain.
Also, a regional war would secure Netanyahu's position.
I think the vote that Netanyahu just survived in the Knesset, by a very narrow margin, by like one vote, stabilizes his coalition.
It was a vote over enlisting ultra-Orthodox males who comprise 13% of Israel's Jewish population in the military.
Well, they worked out a compromise which keeps one of the ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism, in the coalition.
And that means Netanyahu survives for the moment, which I think lowers the risk of an immediate strike.
Because if Netanyahu ordered a strike today, he could have delayed that vote.
The public might circle the wagons around him, but he survived.
But militarily speaking, there is a need from the Israeli point of view.
Their strike in 2024, where they claim to have dismantled several S-300 anti-aircraft systems of Iran, actually only dismantled, this is from the Israeli perspective, only dismantled the radar systems.
And Iran has managed to or will manage to repair those in the very near future.
So they feel like they have this tight window to attack.
But again, they can only set back the nuclear program, according to their own intelligence, How corrupt is the IAEA and who runs it?
Well, I mean, it's corrupt because the United States has so much influence over it.
Same as with the OPCW, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which, as Aaron Mate amply demonstrated, was basically used as a tool to achieve regime change in Syria and even validate staged chemical attacks.
So the IAEA is clearly playing the same role here.
And as we're seeing from these documents, its director rose from the And there are conspiracy theories that Ammano was even killed by Israel after suffering this mysterious illness.
and Grossi now clearly If these documents are to be believed, I haven't seen him respond to them.
And just look at his performance this whole year, where he is almost single-handedly helping drive the Israeli case for attacking Iran.
Is the Israeli government supplying arms to the Ukrainians?
And the Israeli government has been supplying arms to the Ukrainians.
I was one of a select few reporters in English covering the story of Israel arming the Azov Battalion, the neo-Nazi battalion, which was on the front lines of the Ukrainian military's attack on the pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass.
And I was actually personally attacked by the Ukrainian embassy in, I believe, Germany for reporting that story.
And then last year, or I think it was last year, there were reports in U.S. media that Israel had agreed to transfer Patriot batteries to Ukraine.
And now that has been confirmed.
And the Israeli ambassador to I believe the Israeli ambassador to Ukraine has personally confirmed that Israel's arming Ukraine.
So Israel always had this pose of neutrality in order to keep Russia on its side.
And that was very important in Syria, where you had Russia kind of managing Iran and keeping Iran from having too much influence inside Syria.
And now the facade is over.
It's very clear that Israel has sided.
With the U.S. and with the collective West, it has 1.5 million Russians among its own population, lawmakers in the Knesset who actually side with Russia.
Naftali Bennett, the Israeli member of parliament, opposition figure, attempted to broker some kind of peace deal early on.
But that's all gone.
And it's clear that Israel is supporting Ukraine.
So the question is, what will Russia do?
Will Russia do anything?
Because Russia was de-conflicting with Israel and Syria.
Russia was weakening the IRGC presence in Syria.
What will Russia do to retaliate?
Questions, my dear friend.
Thank you, Max.
Thank you for putting up with this new system that Chris put together.
The last minute.
I don't know if we'll be back on StreamYard or not.
I don't know if it was some intentional attack.
It wasn't intentional.
They are international.
But appreciate your patience.
And as always, from that clip, that three-minute clip we watched, not only your patience, but your personal courage.
All the best, my friend.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
And thanks to Chris for putting this together last minute.
And thank you for watching us in this new, unique system that we have.
Coming up tomorrow, Friday, at 8 in the morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 4 in the afternoon, the Intelligence Community Roundtable at 4.30 in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
And sometime during the day, we'll let you know when, Professor John Mearsheimer.
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