Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - AMB. Charles Freeman : Genocide and Starvation

Aug. 5, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

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AMB. Charles Freeman : Genocide and Starvation

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	Hi, everyone.
	Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
	Today is Tuesday, August 5th, 2025.
	Ambassador Charles Freeman will be with us in just a moment on genocide and starvation.
	But first this.
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	Ambassador Freeman, welcome here, my dear friend.
	Before we get to the latest involving Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu and genocide and starvation and what Donald Trump acknowledges and what he won't, I want to ask you a few other questions.
	I had a fascinating conversation yesterday with our friend and colleague, Jeff Sachs, about China.
	And I know you have a great deal of expertise in China.
	You, in fact, were President Nixon's translator when he made his very famous and historic trip to Beijing.
	What is the origin of the present day bellicosity, American bellicosity toward China?
	Well, it's probably mainly a psychological phenomenon.
	Around 1870, the United States became the world's largest economy.
	In the 20th century, we became the most powerful country on the planet.
	And we're having trouble adjusting to being number two.
	China in 1820 had about one-third, a little over one-third, close to two-fifths of the world's economic wealth.
	By 1945, it was down to 4%.
	It's now, in purchasing power terms, about a third larger than we are.
	It also outproduces us, about twice as many manufacturers, almost over a third of the world's manufacturers.
	So we're having trouble adjusting to a diminution in status.
	So that's the first point.
	The second is that we don't have a strategy or a diplomatic approach to things these days.
	Everything we see is through a military lens.
	And therefore, even though the major challenge of China is economic and technological, our counter to it is entirely military.
	So you put these two things together and you get what we have, which is an American elite, military-industrial complex in the lead, that sees China as the enemy.
	I don't think the average American necessarily agrees with that.
	But as we've seen in many other arenas, there is a sharp divide between elite opinion, Washington, and ordinary people in this country.
	I'm reminded, and this is in furtherance of what you just said, Ambassador, of Secretary of Defense Heg Seth standing in Japan about three months ago and threatening China.
	I mean, what kind of diplomacy is that?
	Well, we don't seem to have any idea of what diplomacy is these days.
	You know, the president's announcement of punitive tariffs against India has basically undone decades of efforts to court India, which is a geopolitical swing state.
	We've shown ourselves to be no friend.
	In fact, to be the equivalent of an enemy.
	You know, as I'm always remembering the remark of the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia when we asked him to do something that really wasn't in Saudi interest.
	And he replied, well, I guess a friend who doesn't help you is no better than an enemy who does you no harm.
	We are not building bridges to the world.
	We are burning them.
	Wow.
	The president of the United States made a rather extraordinary statement the other day.
	We'll put it up as a full screen in response to a tweet back and forth he was having with former Russian President Medvedev based on the highly I'm reading the Donald Trump tweet now based on the highly provocative statements of the former president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev who is now the deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.
	I have ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.
	Words are very important and can often lead to unintended consequences.
	I hope this will not be one of those instances.
	Thank you for your attention to this matter.
	How wise or unwise was a public statement like that and a reaction like that to somebody tweeting and tweaking him?
	Three comments.
	First, it's encouraging that President Trump recognizes that words can have consequences since he has a very loose way of speaking that does have consequences for the country.
	Second, Medvedev is famously intemperate and many people say that he's mainly drunk, which is an unfortunate element of Russian culture.
	So I don't think what he said needed to be taken quite as alarmingly as the president did.
	And third, moving submarines around is absolutely meaningless.
	It is a gesture.
	Our nuclear submarines, that is, capable of those capable of launching submarine-launched ballistic missiles, are in the sea, out at sea, all the time.
	And they can hit Russia from any point on the globe.
	So I'm not quite sure what the appropriate region is, but I guess I need to make a final point, and that is by answering intemperate language with an implied nuclear threat, the president is escalating the danger of a nuclear exchange.
	This is not something that a responsible government should do.
	Will the growing Western recognition of the genocide and starvation in Gaza help accelerate an end to it?
	Well, it's all in the hands of the Israelis as long as we back them.
	We are backing them.
	And therefore, I see no reason to believe that the genocide will halt.
	On the other hand, the level of public agitation in the West over this, the rest of the world long ago recognized that Israel was doing unspeakable things.
	The agitation now in the West is having an effect on politicians.
	It explains the announcement of an intent to recognize a Palestinian state by many Western countries, including our formerly friendly northern neighbor, Canada.
	And it explains President Trump suddenly taking an interest in the starvation in Gaza.
	These, however, are political sought.
	They are cynical maneuvers, quite consistent with past prevarications.
	For example, the eternal peace process, which was an excuse for not making peace.
	The two-state solution, which was an excuse for not recognizing Palestinian self-determination and putting everything in the hands of Israel.
	Palestine could only have self-determination if Israel agreed.
	And now we have a recognition of a Palestinian state, which is entirely moot in the American sense of that word.
	That is an empty gesture, because while it is a slap in the face for Israel and taken as such, it does nothing to advance the Palestinian self-determination that it purports to endorse.
	The president was asked yesterday, well, actually on Sunday, if there's evidence of genocide, if he sees evidence of genocide, and he said, I don't.
	We'll play the clip for you in a minute.
	He then goes on to one of his rambling statements of the horrors of war.
	But you have to listen very carefully at the earliest part of this.
	You can barely hear him say it, but I can tell you that he does say, I don't.
	Chris, cut number one.
	You think the evidence of the genocide in Gaza?
	I don't think, sad, look, they're in a war.
	Some horrible things happened on October 7th, as you know.
	It was a horrible, horrible thing.
	One of the worst I've ever seen.
	I've seen a lot of bad things since the president in terms of wars and potential wars.
	I mean, if you look at the one that we just stopped, they had thousands of people being dead already at the border between Thailand and Cambodia, thousands of people.
	And I've seen some bad things, but that October 7th was with Hamas was really, really bad.
	So he rambles on and on and goes into irrelevant comments, taking credit for resolving the border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, another issue for another time.
	But is he still under the control of his Zionist donors or his Zionist blackmailers?
	Absolutely.
	And so is much of our press.
	There's an amazing, well, several things have happened recently to join your question on this subject and the president's remarks with your previous question.
	The word hasbara, the Hebrew word for explanation, which has become synonymous with lies, has become so toxic that Israel has banned its use in favor of adopting the more neutral term public diplomacy.
	But Israeli hasbara or public diplomacy remains extremely potent.
	There is a denial of genocide still promoted by Israel.
	The president obviously has been affected by that.
	Everyone in the world can see that there's a genocide.
	Every genocide expert in the world, every human rights organization that has looked at this has concluded there is genocide.
	Second, we have an ongoing campaign on the issue of starvation, well illustrated by a headline in the Wall Street Journal that Hamas starves hostages and Palestinians and Jews are blamed.
	So the whole idea that there's starvation in Gaza, which first was denied, Israel now accepts there is starvation, but it says that it's all because Hamas is stealing non-existent food, the food that Israel itself will not allow to enter Gaza,
	even though the world is eager to feed the Palestinians and save them from the exponential growth of death by starvation that is now in progress.
	So the answer to the question is, yes, the president is still the prisoner of his Zionist donors.
	Do you believe that the allegations of the former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben Manash, that the Israelis are blackmailing members of the American government over the Epstein affair?
	You believe that those allegations are credible?
	They are certainly consistent with Israeli behavior in other contexts.
	I don't have any way of knowing whether Mr. Ben-Benaj Manash is truthful or not.
	But I think this is one of these cases where the charges are very plausible.
	They have to be taken seriously.
	They should be investigated.
	Here's former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, not a friend of Netanyahu's, accusing the current prime minister of engaging in a war of deception in order to save his premiership, an argument that you and I have heard made over and over, but rarely out of the mouth of a former prime minister.
	You know, he has that unique way of speaking American English.
	But if you strain a bit, you can hear what he's saying.
	Chris cut number nine.
	I think the whole war in the last several months, probably more than a few months, is what we call a war of deception.
	It has nothing to do with the security interests of Israel.
	It has nothing to do with the future of the hostages, probably risking them.
	And it's basically a war to hold together the coalition and to save Netanyahu from the day of reckoning that will come inevitably when the war stops, when his criminal court case of corruption will be accelerated.
	There will be a demand that he could not stand to establish a national inquiry into the events that led to the 7th October what happened afterwards and so on.
	So basically, it's totally unjustified.
	I'm a part of a group of former chiefs of staff, former commander of the Anfoli, former heads of Mossad, former heads of secret service, and former commissioners of the police who call together upon Netanyahu to stop the war immediately, to bring back all the hostages and to start a new chapter.
	The Israelis now recognizing that the savagery, bellicosity, and extent of this war is directed by one man in order to preserve his premiership and has nothing to do with the security of the state of Israel.
	Several comments.
	First, Ehud Barak is a brilliant man, in this case, very plain spoken.
	He is, of course, partisan.
	He is a former politician.
	However, he was speaking in his former role as head of the armed forces of Israel.
	And he noted that he and others, 500, 600 former national security officials, have written a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu making exactly the case he just did, that this war is this so-called war, because it isn't a war.
	It's an annihilation.
	It's an extermination.
	It's a genocide.
	It's a Holocaust.
	He makes the point, they all make the point in the letter to the prime minister that it has to stop, that it is damaging the security of the state of Israel, placing its future in jeopardy.
	And that is true.
	What is most notable about this is the open break with the previous solidarity of Israelis behind their campaign to eradicate the Palestinian presence in Palestine, something Ehud Barak himself endorsed during his political career.
	He's joined by Ehud Olmert, another former prime minister who actually uses the word genocide to describe what Israel is doing.
	So this is yet another evidence of the stress, the strains, the divisions, the jeopardy that Israel has placed itself in.
	And I'll make just a final note, and that is polls show that 85% of Israelis basically support the genocide.
	They don't accept the word genocide, but they support the extermination of the Palestinians in Gaza and their removal from the West Bank.
	But there are 15% who don't, and they're on the streets now.
	Israelis are out there protesting the murder through starvation of Palestinian women and children.
	So there are decent people in Israel, even if they've been reduced to a minority, and they're beginning to be heard.
	And I think Ehud Barak represents the crust of a wave of opposition that is building.
	Here is Ehud Barak in the same interview, but with an AI-generated translation.
	The thrust of what he's saying, you'll hear this in a moment, Ambassador, is that Netanyahu and Israel are not the same.
	Cut number 10.
	We are facing a problem.
	The world has to understand Netanyahu and Israel are not the same.
	A person can be a full supporter of Israel, critic.
	They're independent of the issue of Netanyahu.
	Netanyahu is basically a problem for the Israeli public to decide or to depose, not for the rest of the world.
	You know.
	Is he on his last leg politically?
	I mean, this morning he's talking about occupying Gaza as if the war in the past two and a half years hasn't done enough damage.
	He now wants the military to occupy that strip of land.
	Well, there are lots of indications that this may be the end times for Prime Minister Netanyahu.
	He is a very wily politician.
	He has survived against all the odds up to now, so we can't count him out.
	With regard to Gaza, his own army chief says basically there are two options.
	One is military occupation, which the army strongly opposes because they understand all of the consequences of that, both in terms of the damage, the further damage to Israel's almost non-existent reputation internationally now,
	but also because they know that while they've destroyed governance in Gaza, Hamas no longer is able to maintain order and there's anarchy.
	They're not capable of policing it and ending the anarchy.
	The second option he's put forward, which he favors, is a return to where we were before October 7th.
	That is besieging Gaza, sealing it off as an open-air concentration camp and managing it from the outside.
	The prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu, strongly favors the first option.
	So he's at odds with his own military, his own intelligence people, much of the Israeli public.
	And at some point, this has to take its toll.
	And the reason he favors the military option is if he does anything less than that, he'll lose the hardliners in his government.
	The government under the rules of the Knesset will collapse and the Israeli public will have to have an election, which he'll probably lose because in the interim, he'll be convicted for corruption.
	Do I have all this right?
	You do.
	And I just add that another motivation, one should not assume that cynical as he is, Prime Minister Netanyahu does not share the Zionist dream of evicting all Palestinians from Palestine and replacing them with Jewish settlers.
	He does.
	So he wants to go down in history as the man that made Palestine free of Palestinians and established it as a purely Jewish ultranationalist state.
	Wow.
	One more clip from former Prime Minister Barack arguing that Netanyahu manipulates Trump and his inner circle.
	Cut number 11.
	Netanyahu manipulate the Trump in his inner circle and the rest of the world to believe that we were facing a binary choice.
	Either we capitulate Hamas, which is unacceptable, or we'll have to continue until the last, the total, absolute victory, which is another lunatic vision.
	The reality is different.
	There is a solution from day one, bring in a kind of interior Arab force, Emiratis, the Egyptians, Jordanians for a limited time, 18 or 24 months, bring, create a technocrat government in Gaza, Palestinian bureaucracy and building gradually a security force.
	Only two conditions should be moved by Israel.
	Number one, not a single individual who participated in the massacre of October 7th or part of the armed branch of Hamas cannot serve in any organ of the new entity.
	Number two, Israel will withdraw only to the perimeter and will withdraw to the border only once all the pre-agreed security arrangements are set in.
	That's all.
	It's on the table for a year and a half.
	Netanyahu rejected it because it means that the Palestinians will be involved in that, that Israel will have to somehow negotiate starting a process toward the two-state solution, which is a necessity anyhow.
	And it's another illusion that we can avoid it for the longer term.
	What do you think?
	I think he's very realistic.
	He's also in tune with his colleagues who are still on active duty in the Israeli Defense Forces.
	What he advocates is essentially what the chief of the armed forces does.
	However, you know, there's one element of unrealism here, which reflects Israel's isolation from its neighbors and from the world, and that is there is no Arab interest in saving Israel from the consequences of its bad behavior, evil behavior, malicious, sadistic behavior in Gaza.
	And the idea that somehow or other Israel can foist responsibility for managing and succoring the people of Gaza or elsewhere in Palestine onto its Arab neighbors is preposterous, given the fact that Israel's behavior toward those Arab neighbors has been so violent and indifferent to their interests.
	You know, I think Ehud Barak is remarkable in many ways as a leader of the Israeli defense forces.
	He actually understood that in order to advance Israeli interests, Israel had to at least appear to advance the interests of other countries as well.
	So he had an instinct for diplomacy, which he's showing in these remarks.
	But time has passed on.
	Israel is a pariah state.
	Basically, it has forfeited all moral authority under Netanyahu, and it does not have the political appeal to accomplish what he suggests.
	Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much.
	As always, a fascinating conversation and one that is deeply appreciated.
	We look forward to seeing you again next week, my friend.
	Thank you.
	And coming up later today at 2 o'clock this afternoon, still with us, Ambassador.
	There we go.

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