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Sept. 2, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
29:47
Alastair Crooke : Trump and Violent Zionism
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, September 2, 2025.
Feels like a Monday here in the US after our holiday yesterday, but it is a Tuesday.
Alistair Crook will be with us in just a moment on Donald Trump and violent Zionism.
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And now is the time.
Alistair Crook, welcome here, my dear friend.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
Before we get to President Trump and his support for violent Zionism, one or two questions about Ukraine.
Do you think that Ukrainian elites, generals, diplomats, senior politicians recognize that the end of the war is near?
near because Russia is so close to achieving its military objectives and the Ukrainian military is so dilapidated?
Yes, I think broadly because it's obvious.
I mean, it's unmistakable and I think they do see that.
But I think there is also the fact that they're not allowed to see that.
The grip of, if you like, the extreme nationalists over the structures and the grip of the Western services not to let the grip over the, if you like, the police, the military, the political class in Ukraine, let that slip at all means that it just can't go on.
And of course, it is then, I mean, very obviously being urged on by the Europeans who will make no concessions whatsoever.
They just tell Zelensky, make no concessions, not an inch, we will be with you.
And even today, in Tuesday, there is going to be a meeting in Paris.
And you can be sure Zelensky will be there.
I don't know for certain that he's been invited, but it'd be a surprise if he wasn't.
He will be hugged.
He will be kissed.
He will be embraced by all the European leaders, told what a brave fellow he is, continuing as they stick absolutely to no concessions, ceasefire and rearmament of it, and Western troops, NATO troops for the peacekeeping force.
that's you know the sides are just miles apart but i think that the i think that the yes and it's going to dawn even more because of what's happening on the battlefield at the contact line around Pokrovsk and the forefront line, if you like, cities.
They are all on the verge of crumbling.
Why doesn't it happen quicker?
Because Russia has a tactic.
They want them to stay there, the forces, the Ukrainian forces, because they eliminate them more quickly.
This is what happened also in Kursk.
They, I mean, they could have gone in and counterattacked and lost a lot of troops.
No, they just waited while Ukraine reinforced its positions, its untenable positions in in Kursk and and then kill them and that's what's going to be happening and then after these frontline cities fall then anything's going to open up you you mentioned that the Ukrainian elites are not stupid and they can see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears what's happening but
they're not permitted to articulate it for fear of reprisal Do the EU elites about whom you just spoke, do they recognize that this is a fruitless cause and it's just about over?
And are they afraid to say it or have they deluded themselves and they think that somehow by some means Ukraine can still prevail?
You know, I mean, those are very difficult questions, but the first one is, you know, money is the actual, you know, the glue that holds the thing together.
Vast amounts of money going to the Ukrainian elites from the West.
I mean huge sums.
We're talking billions, not millions, are, if you like, liquefying the whole process of opposition.
And for the European elites, it's more of a sense of an existential fear, which they, I think, have absorbed their own fear.
I think I said to you just last week about Macron was saying about how, you know, they see Putin as the predator, the ogre at the doorstep.
seeking to eat Europe.
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
It's fantasy.
There's no way that could happen.
But do they have they convinced themselves?
Well, I suspect a lot of them are convinced because they know that if they move away from that narrative, there's a great big hole underneath.
They are at the edge of the abyss.
And if they move away one jot from the narrative of your war with Russia, it's all Russia's fault.
Von der Leyen was also saying that Putin is this predator, this, if you like, this ogre at the door, this beast at the door.
Also when she was in on her troubles this weekend.
Yeah, possibly they do.
believe that they can somehow push Trump, can push the United States into escalation.
And who knows, they feel, more escalation, more sanctions, they'll press for more sanctions.
They hope that somehow all of this will sort of come right in the end, that Putin will fall.
It's a fantasy, but it is gripping.
It's gripping because it is so divorced from reality and is in the sort of stage of fantasies that people.
people accept and embrace and more than embrace, they revel in it.
Look at the way he'll be, Zelensky will be embraced.
I mean, as if he's some sort of superhero come in from the cosmos to save the Europeans, hugging him and bowing to him and everything.
It is really something quite remote from, quite detached from reality.
Does Donald Trump appear to understand the goals of the Netanyahu regime of annihilating the Palestinian people or so defanging them as to make them malleable to every last Israeli wish.
He understands absolutely.
It was quite instructive.
Aloof Ben, you've probably read him quite often in Haritz, English this time.
But he says Aloof Ben made the comment that And, you know, he swims in this water of Israeli politics every day.
And he said, if you look at the cabinet and if you look at the right wing, Ben Gavir Smatra.
And then if you look at the center where you have Netanyahu in the center, and then likely not much of the center, you have Gideon Sar and Ariad Dahiri, the head of Shah's.
If you look at that cabinet as a whole, Trump, if you position Trump into that cabinet, he would be on the far right.
with Smotrich and Ben Gavir.
That was Aloof Ben's opinion about his situation.
So yes, he, you know, and he said the other day i mean on his way to scotland you know it's up to the israelis you know hamas is hopeless it's they need to finish them off they need to finish the job we know what that means the um idf leadership and the um mossad and shinbet leadership keep telling netanyahu it's a grave mistake to
send the IDF in to obliterate Gaza City, that it will be a disaster.
Do you agree?
And if so, why?
I agree entirely.
And in fact, 600 former Israeli defense, security, and diplomatic officials have now sent a letter to Trump and saying, for God's sake, save us from this.
This is going to be an absolute disaster for us.
israel we need you to say to netanyahu no you need to do a deal or deal that's already been accepted by hamas in this occasion you need to do a deal with hamas you need to end the war and netanyahu refuses.
He refuses to even put it on the agenda of the cabinet meeting that was held over the weekend.
He refused a cabinet meeting that went on for six hours, put on the agenda by the chief of the army staff.
He said, We need to talk about doing a deal of getting the hostages back.
And there were huge demonstrations in Tel Aviv and across the land in favor of doing a deal to release the hostages.
Because the chief of defense staff says, you know, by saying you want to invade Gaza, you're signing the death warrant of however many are alive you're just killing them and this is just not acceptable practice so the divisions on this are are really profound um and as i say uh netanyahu says truthfully or not but he says i have the support of trump on this i have the support of trump
for finishing off uh gaza but what we're also hearing and we're seeing is that, you know, people have written off the resistance long ago and said, oh, well, it's been broken.
Great success by Israel.
Let's see.
Let's see in Iran.
Let's see in Lebanon with Hezbollah.
And you will see that even the Israelis are saying, you know, that what happened?
We thought we cleared Gaza and we find they still have a force of 20,000 men and they are digging new tunnels and that they are reinstalling them.
They have tunnel-making equipment in the tunnels and they are building new tunnels.
And, you know, things are moving like that.
I mean, people have written off Hezbollah, I think, prematurely.
They are intact with their heavy weapons.
They can strike.
at Tel Aviv Anytime.
And the Yemenis, I mean, after this, you know, the bombing that actually annihilated the entire civil cabinet of the of Yemen, the Houthi cabinet.
It was the prime minister and 11 ministers.
None of them have military functions.
They're sort of minister of transport, minister of tourism, minister of this and that, all killed.
For what?
And so the Yemenis are going to be tougher now.
There's no doubt about that.
Al-Houthi was not affected by that.
The military leaders were not affected.
This was an entirely a sort of public, you know, civil affairs cabinet.
What is the effect on the average Arab in the Middle East to the ferocious violence of the Sionist regime, an example of which you just articulated,
the murder of civilian cabinet members that have nothing whatsoever to do with the military in a country where the government is not at war with Israel, but some militias resident in the country are.
What is the reaction in the Middle East to this?
Why is there no enough is enough?
Well, I mean, that's a long and complicated story.
essentially the sunni world prefers to if you like define the conflict as not being taxed by israel but by being a war fomented by iran and so what you see is the support by saudi arabia in lebanon,
absolute support, I mean, siege-like support by Saudi Arabia in Lebanon, trying to force what will probably end as a civil war, the attempt to disarm Hezbollah.
Hezbollah are not going to disarm.
see the same thing with Qatar supporting totally what's happening in Syria.
And all of these Sunni leaders basically are And they press this argument.
And ISIS is being restarted in the Sunni world and in Iraq, the same pressures.
So you see the basic division of states, monarchical states, that don't have really much confidence in their legitimacy.
They were, after all, imposed by the British with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war.
This is not Iran's fault, but this is just the reality.
Iran during this period has become a stronger power and they have become weaker, becoming just simply, if you like, proxies of the United States.
Notwithstanding the devastating retaliation that Iran visited on Israel during the 12-day war back in June, a devastation that resulted, we believe, in Prime Minister.
Netanyahu secretly begging President Trump to bring an end to it.
Notwithstanding all of that, is Israel getting ready to attack Iran again?
Absolutely.
That's very clear.
Because, first of all, I mean, a think tank in Israel, IMSS, came out and said, you know, that actually the 13th of June, the Israeli sneak attack on Iran completely failed.
And what we see, and it laments it, that, you know, Iran is nowhere near breakdown in terms of civil order.
In fact, the opposite, people are gathering around Iran.
And yet, nonetheless, it argues for regime change and it says it must come.
And it's become inevitable because of this change.
This change, I mean, you know, not only has Israel changed, and you described that at the outset, it's changed, you know, the old Zionism is gone.
the Zionism of the Ashkenazi, the liberal European Zionism is replaced.
You ask most Israelis what is Zionism today?
They can't answer.
And if they did answer, honestly, they'd say it's the Zionism of Ben Gavir and Smotrich of messianic, if you like, complete disdain for Palestinians or for anyone.
This is what you have called revisionist Zionism, am I right?
Well, the Israelis themselves, Yossi Klein, in the Hebrew version of Haras, calls it the third stage, moving to the third stage of Zionism, which is barbarism.
And that's what he's referring to in Gaza and saying, you know, this can't go on, this violence, this, and indeed it, it was Barack, the envoy of Trump, on a television interview just a few days ago, who was saying, you know, Sykes Pico is gone, boundaries have gone, Israel will go where it wants, do what it wants, when it wants, on its terms alone.
and we are in, if you like, a new form.
My main point was, The old Zionism faded away.
I mean, a few elements of it still protest about it, but largely they are defeated.
But we see Washington, we see the United States and Europe.
It's bleeding across into how we think about conflicts.
This Israeli way of thinking about conflicts, we see this in the sense that it's now normalized to advocate for decapitation, for assassinations, for targeted assassinations.
We see this Westerners sort of saying, what, did you hear a single protest from anyone or even an Arab state at the extermination of the entire cabinet in the last few days in Yemen?
Nothing, not a word has come out because it's now normalized.
And the effect of that is the supreme leader recognized that in an address to the people said, you know, forget about negotiating with the United States.
That is superficial.
Do you not understand that the United States wants to make us totally compliant, dependent, that they want to crush us and make us obedient.
And we will never do that.
Iran is different.
It will never accept that.
So they understand war is inevitable in Iran and probably escalation is inevitable in the Russia context too.
I think one of the most important things that came out, by the way, from this meeting in China, the SCO, the Shanghai Coordination Organization.
meeting in Xinjiang was, first of all, a signed statement by the three powers, the foreign secretaries of Russia, China, and Iran, saying that snapback sanctions is illegal, inappropriate, and outside of the, if you like, the context of the JCPOA.
The Euro three are acting both illegally and and against procedures of the and they sent this letter to the secretary general not that he'll do much about it but they sent this letter saying they are completely opposed to this United States action of encouraging the E3 to create snapback election.
So, I mean, all of this, it makes it inevitable that we are going to go to conflict.
And equally came out of this meeting in China.
I hear this, I can't vouch for this, but I hear it on Russian channels more, that it's been agreed that...
And he's expected to tell.
tell Trump that despite what happened in Anchorage, Russia and his sanctions and threats of more missiles, Russia is going to continue with its special operation, unchanged.
It's going to continue with that.
And if the United States cannot control either Brussels, the Europeans, or Zelensky, then Russia will just continue on with the special.
special operation until it achieves success, irrespective of whatever is being threatened by Trump.
A very strong language, as I understand.
Some elements of it, I think, has already been passed to the White House.
I don't know where Trump is at the moment.
They've been passed to the White House, giving an indication of what they're saying.
But I mean, basically, I mean, Putin is giving Trump the an ultimatum um either accept that we are going to force on the europeans and Zelensky an outcome by military means or else you can escalate and we will retaliate.
Well, what do you expect?
I mean, Trump just authorized the sale of 3,500 medium range missiles.
They can travel 280 miles from the point at which they are dispatched.
to be sold to Iran.
These things can only be used or obviously be used to attack inside Moscow.
You can't, what expect President Putin to do?
Just roll over?
I mean, this is...
This is no way for the United States to negotiate and try and bring about peace, but this is the Donald Trump way.
This is the Donald Trump way.
And this is what everyone has now understood in the BRICS and the SEO, that this is a sort of calibrated attempt to make everyone dependent.
And then once they're dependent, to weaponize the dependency against those states.
India understands that.
It is about weaponized dependency, that they were trying to make India dependent.
It's failed, but that was the aim of it, to weaponize it against India, to force it to be obedient to the United States.
And that's what they want with Russia.
They want to get put Putin in a position where he becomes dependent in one way or another on the United States in economic terms or in lifting of sanctions, and then to use that dependency.
weaponize it against him and try and provoke his exit from power.
They see that and this is the answer and obviously this is something that's been under intention.
intense discussions between President Xi and Putin over the last few days in China.
And so this is what we get.
We're continuing the special operation until all the tasks and goals are fully achieved.
And since Washington cannot control Ukrainians or the Europeans, then there's no choice.
We are going to do that.
And if you escalate, then we will respond.
mean, I think it's pretty simple.
And I think also predictable and inevitable.
I mean, you know, the Putin keeps saying, and he still says it, if there is a change in Brussels, if there is a change by the Europeans and Zelensky, he's open to then going down the political track, but there's absolutely no sign of it.
So they're continuing and they will escalate and they will, we've seen this, the signal was very clear.
First of all, there was a destruction of an American owned electronics factory in Ukraine, to the west in Ukraine.
Then there was the destruction of the Turkish drone factory, Bakhtyar factory, completely destroyed by Kinshasa missiles.
And then there was just before the talks in Anchorage, the destruction of the German attempt to assemble missiles in Ukraine on the Taurous.
platform.
And all of these have been destroyed.
And no doubt Russia will do the same when they come in with this new thing they call the flamingo which turns out to be a British-led missile that is assembled in the AAE by the way.
And this is what the flamingo is people have discovered.
This is what it is.
I can't remember its correct name.
But it's made up of, you know, little components, engines or old engines.
I mean, I don't think it's going to be very effective.
I don't think it's going to frighten Putin one jot.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall in that conversation later this week between President Trump and President Putin.
Alistair, thank you very much.
Thank you for the news you brought us.
We hadn't heard here in the U.S. about that conversation.
But if our friend Sergei Lavrov says it's going to happen, no doubt it is scheduled.
Thank you, my dear friend.
I just want to make clear I wasn't quoting Lavrov.
And I said, you know, this I can't vouch absolutely because it's not the Russian practice to put, you know, to tell and it's undiplomatic to say in advance too much of what they say.
So I picked this up on my channels, if you like.
Got it, got it, got it.
And thank you for that.
Thank you, Alistair, as always.
And thank you for accommodating my schedule today on Tuesday.
We look forward to seeing you next week, my dear friend.
Thank you very much.
Of course.
All the best.
Thank you.
All the best to you.
We have a busy day for you, combining Monday and Tuesday.
Today at 10 o'clock, Ray McGovern at 11.30.
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