Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - LtCOL. Bill Astore : Is Israel a US Ally?

All Episodes

Previous Next

Sept. 23, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

25:33

LtCOL. Bill Astore : Is Israel a US Ally?

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom.
	Today is Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025.
	Colonel Bill Astori joins us now.
	Colonel, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
	Thank you for uh joining us.
	I want to talk to you about whether or not Israel is truly an ally of the United States.
	But before we get there, um in the now year nearly universal recognition of the state of Palestine, what is your view as to the geopolitical significance of this?
	Is it just performative or is it likely to provoke some change?
	Yeah, I'm I'm I hope I hope it's more than performative.
	But what worries me is that it took so long for this recognition to come.
	And when we look at Gaza right now, what what we see is uh is a is a territory that's been reduced largely to rubble.
	And so the recognition of rubble is just a sad state of affairs.
	I mean, we also know that Israel is rapidly expanding uh into the West Bank.
	So just as states like Britain and France finally decide to recognize the idea of a Palestinian state, there's not much left to recognize.
	If only the recognition would come with steps after that, concrete steps, like an embargo on weapons to Israel.
	That would really make a difference.
	Would it make a difference if the General Assembly, as it once did with South Africa, because it wasn't apartheid state, were to suspend Israel's membership in the UN because it is an apartheid state?
	Right.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, I I you know, I hope the United Nations does take that kind of action.
	It's it's desperately needed.
	I mean, when you when you look at, I mean, we I think most Americans, I hope, have a sense of what's happening in Gaza.
	I mean, mass starvation.
	Every day you read about more Palestinians being killed and wounded.
	I mean, recently we had uh an IDF general finally come out and say that you know they've killed and wounded Israel, roughly 250,000 Palestinians.
	You know, that's that's a number that in that's not allowed in the American press.
	And yet, here you have an Israeli general basically saying, yeah, you know, we took the gloves off.
	Nothing's restricting our ability to destroy uh Gaza.
	And that's exactly what's happening.
	How about on the other side of Israel where the there's a some sort of a semblance of government where the Palestinian Authority is, these are the people uh whose visas were denied by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in direct violation of the UN charter, which requires the host country to admit uh the bona fide uh representatives of all membership uh countries.
	But is that uh is the recognition of that as a sovereign state and as a government of some geopolitical significance?
	Yeah, well, well, you hope so.
	Um except for the fact that uh Israel just seems to want to, you know, the bomb or to kill you know any kind of uh Palestinian uh delegation that would have a uh a chance at negotiating some kind of a ceasefire.
	You know, as long as the Trump administration stands behind Israel with with a blank check of support, uh you don't really see much of an opportunity or a chance for dramatic uh change.
	You know, let's hope uh powerful statements from the united nations as well as you know more forthright examples you know not just recognition of a palestinian state but again you know concrete actions against israel uh that would that would shift you know israel's uh strategy uh if such a thing is possible what what remains of the so-called uh international rules based order
	Right.
	Well, it's a case where it seems as if the idea that we are law abiding and that the laws apply to the weak as well as to the strong, that just doesn't seem to be the situation at all.
	And it's the United States and Israel in particular who have been undermining the very idea of a rules-based order.
	We've made a mockery of it.
	So it's in shreds as a result.
	Didn't we write it?
	Didn't we craft it?
	Didn't we boast about it?
	Didn't we attempt to impose it on other countries?
	Right.
	Well, you know, I go back to 1944 and the promise of the United Nations.
	I mean, these were the high ideals that the United States used to advocate.
	And that was the country that that I was proudest of.
	That was the country I thought I was serving when I served 20 years in the Air Force.
	You know, I believe in the U.S. Constitution.
	I believe in international law.
	But those are ideas.
	You know, this is something that that we're abandoning as a country.
	And it's not only putting ourselves at risk as a democracy, but it's putting the whole idea of of an international order based on laws in danger as well.
	Colonel Astoria, does the Netanyahu regime follow any moral code or international standards?
	Or does it just kill and slaughter whoever it wants?
	Well, I think I think it's a case of in of might making right.
	I always come back.
	I think of, you know, the Romans and, you know, the criticism of of of Tacitus that he put in a Germanic chieftain where they said of the Rome and the empire, they said, you know, they they create a desert and call it peace.
	And that is, to me, what Israel is doing with Gaza.
	They're there.
	Israel is attempting to wipe out, you know, any traces of Palestinian presence there.
	And then they'll they'll call it peace.
	And that is basically the the the rule of the of the strong.
	You know, there is no morality there.
	This is just a case of might.
	And at least in their eyes, you know, making right.
	Why does the United States always seem to be fighting or financing foreign wars?
	Well, yeah.
	Well, they're profitable.
	They're profitable for a few.
	That's certainly part of it.
	And I always come back to Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex.
	Of course, he added Congress to the mix as well.
	So that that's part of it.
	But part of it, too, is that war contributes to authoritarianism.
	You know, war allows the rule of the strong over the weak.
	It's you know, war is something.
	You know, Chris Hedges wrote a book, a great book called War is a Force that that gives us meaning.
	I mean, this is this is a way of of controlling America as well and controlling, you know, what we spend our money on and what we're able to do as as a country.
	You know, we're throwing away.
	opportunity to have uh better education better health care you know everything else the promise of america is being disappeared under the rubble of whether it's in Iraq or uh afghanistan or now in Gaza.
	Yeah, but why?
	Why don't presidents see that?
	Why do presidents as liberal as Barack Obama and as conservative as Donald Trump want to kill people instead of build bridges?
	And I mean both kinds of bridges, metaphoric bridges and real bridges.
	Yeah, it is strange, isn't it, that Barack Obama once boasted that it surprised him, one of the things that surprised him as president is how good he would get at killing people.
	Yes, he did boast about that.
	And, Colonel, he killed, he targeted Americans with his drones.
	Right.
	And that's why what we're seeing now with the Trump administration just basically summarily executing people on boats without any knowledge of whether or not they're guilty or not, without any kind of due process, is so outrageous.
	And I know you, obviously, as a judge, you're very familiar with the law and the idea that we are not judge, jury and executioner.
	There's a process here.
	And if we don't follow this process, we just descend into utter barbarity.
	We do descend into barbarity.
	I mean, this is Orwellian when the president says, well, they were about to commit a crime, so I executed them before they could commit it.
	About to commit a crime, they were in a speedboat that has a distance of about 50 miles, and they were 1,300 miles from the United States of America, from anything even owned by the United States.
	If they had fired at the Coast Guard or the Navy, that would be a different story.
	But they didn't.
	They were just evaporated by it.
	In my opinion, Pete Hegseth ordered murders, and whoever pulled those triggers should have refused to have done so and resigned their military commissions.
	Right.
	No, absolutely.
	It'll be interesting to see whether our military begins to reflect on their oath of office, where they do, you know, all of us solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
	You know, this is something that we take very seriously.
	There's supposed to be a constitutional process here.
	It's not supposed to be just following orders blindly.
	I mean, we in the military have an obligation to think about what we're doing, whether or not the orders that we're being given are legal.
	And I should hope that those who are in the military now are thinking, you know, very hard about this.
	I think we're in a state of a constitutional crisis, and the public doesn't know it, and the media won't recognize it.
	it Congress doesn't articulate a peep when the president kills people he says oh they were sent by Venezuela did I miss something did Congress declare war on Venezuela?
	Of course not no uh and the courts just keep giving uh Trump all the power he wants to do everything he wants the constitution not uh withstanding now in fairness to the courts this issue hasn't been brought to the courts I don't even know how this could get to the courts right but Congress could do something about this it doesn't do anything the only people I've heard complain are Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Thomas Massey that's it right all credit to them.
	Yes, yes, all credit to them.
	I take a lot of heat from their Republican colleagues when they do that.
	I got to ask you this, and it sounds raw.
	Do we still have a democracy in this country, or is the government controlled by the donor class, by the Zionists?
	Yeah, I guess I'd like to call it a quasi-democracy or a democracy that's withering away.
	And I think that's reflected by the fact that what we want, what the American people generally want, is not reflected in what our government is doing.
	So we have a corporate capture of the government, a government of the special interests and by the special interests and for them.
	And so, I mean, this is something that we're all familiar with the the citizens united decision by the supreme court where it basically said that that money is speech and And once you enshrine money as speech, well, you give you give a billionaire a lot more speech than you and I have.
	You know, that is that is not a democracy.
	Right, right.
	Um that would be the Zionist billionaire oligarchs that are now taking over TikTok.
	Right, right.
	To a person they are billionaires and to a person they are Zionists.
	And uh Oracle, which helps the Israelis find people to kill, it's gonna be running the algorithm.
	Where are we going with this?
	Why isn't there an outrage uh over this?
	We were better off when the Chinese ran it.
	Right.
	Um, yeah, no, oh, I know.
	I yeah, I'm not a yeah, I'm not on TikTok much.
	Um it's it's uh past my generation, I suppose.
	But but we know that on TikTok we saw a lot of videos that actually brought home to us the reality of what was happening in Gaza, which is exactly why they're cracking down on access to TikTok, because you see the raw video footage and you hear testimonial testimony from Palestinians about exactly what is happening, and that is not something apparently that are that are our so-called rulers, uh, you know, they don't want that to be allowed.
	Does Trump control Netanyahu or does Netanyahu control Trump?
	I I see it more as as BB having way too much influence over Trump.
	Uh it's it's Trump who seems more cowed by Netanyahu rather than vice versa.
	Uh I I it always amazes me.
	I mean, is isn't Netanyahu coming this year for the fourth time?
	I I heard something like that.
	Uh and and you know, every time he comes to address Congress, you know, we we we treat him as if you know he's um he's the dictator of our country with all of the bipartisan standing ovations in Congress.
	So you know, I see Trump as being more under his thumb.
	I wonder what would happen if Trump said to Nanets, you know, we're gonna stop sending you military supplies.
	All those members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, whose campaigns were financed uh by APAC and their uh and their colleagues would would revolt and enact some uh veto-proof legislation, I'm sure.
	Yeah, you know, I just I just see Trump lacking the the kind of backbone or or the kind of you know uh moral spine actually to take that kind of of an action.
	I know I I think he also recognizes that that that would put him under an incredible amount of pressure, and I don't see Trump going there.
	I I he's not that kind of a man.
	Well, I think you're right.
	I don't see him doing it as well.
	What is the United States gain, if anything, by its relationship to Israel?
	Right.
	Uh well, yeah, during the Cold War, I I I thought I thought Israel was a you know strong American ally.
	Uh and you know, we always used to talk about Israel as kind of like our uh unsinkable aircraft carrier there in the Middle East that that helped uh uh safeguard American defense to to a certain extent.
	Now, if that if that were ever true, it is is certainly not the case now.
	If anything, uh Israel with its genocide in Gaza uh and all of its other policies threatens our national security.
	It certainly wasn't true when uh Israeli jets uh attacked the USS Liberty and killed 34 or 35 sailors and wounded, 100 some odd uh others and LBJ told uh Robert Strange McNamara, that was his middle name, the Secretary of Defense to turn the planes around and let the Israelis have their have their way.
	So the American presidential fear uh of uh Israeli political power and financial influence goes back uh at least to that era, which is before your time and before mine.
	I was a a student when that happened.
	I remember reading about the Liberty.
	Uh yeah, and when I read about the Six Day War, and that this, of course, this is in the 1970s for me.
	And I just remember being so shocked by it.
	It's like, how did how did we as Americans allow Israel to get away with this, you know, and just and just basically accept their lame excuse that it was a case of mistaken identity when we knew that wasn't the case.
	Yeah.
	Did you um serve in Afghanistan?
	I didn't, I did not know.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, I'll ask you about this anyway.
	Uh, President Trump wants uh Bagram uh Air Force base back in American control because we built it and paid for it.
	Tell that to the Russians that we built it and paid for it.
	Yeah, I think I think President Trump has forgotten who who lost the Afghan war.
	You know, it's typically not the losers who get to dictate the terms.
	So it in this case, uh, there's a little bit of magical thinking and fantasy going on.
	You know, the idea that uh uh the the Taliban, the the rulers of Afghanistan would just say, sure, come on back, America.
	You can have your air base back from from which you can launch attacks on us, uh, is is just completely ludicrous.
	It's even more absurd than trying to pick up Greenland or make Canada part of the United States.
	Right, right.
	I think the uh Republicans talked him out of the Canada idea because it would uh tip the balance in the House of Representatives and the Senate, no matter how you divided, no matter how you divided it up.
	I'm fascinated with all the exposure to harm uh that the national security of the United States has because of our obeisance uh to uh Israel.
	And the opposite of that is the argument that the Israeli apologists make in the United States.
	No, absolutely.
	You know, the I the idea that that that Israel is somehow you know making us uh safer uh is obviously uh not the case at all.
	Uh in fact, I I just see that the the every everything that's happened over the last uh couple of years, you know, since the October 7th uh attack and and the ongoing genocide in Gaza has just exposed uh much more harshly uh the way in which American policy is not driven by uh the law,
	it's not driven by morality, it's not driven by civil rights, it it's it's driven by pure naked power concerns.
	And this, I you know, I just heard today that supposedly we want you know regime change and in Venezuela.
	So the whole idea there, I'm sure, is that regime change means that all of the oil reserves of Venezuela will become you know open to exploitation by multinational corporations with headquarters here in the United States.
	Probably uh you're probably right, uh Colonel, and and and that's probably the reason that he's that Trump is picking fights with the Venezuelan civilians whom he says are narco-terrorists and unworthy uh of life.
	Maybe he's hoping for some sort of a response uh on the part of the Venezuelan military.
	I don't know what their military is like.
	I I think they'd probably be ill-advised to take on uh the United States Navy, but uh Trump might very well be wanting to provoke them back to Afghanistan.
	It was his secretary of state, then Mike Pompeo, uh fierce and staunch uh Zionist and neocon, if ever there was one, right?
	Uh who negotiated the uh departure deal from Afghanistan, which included uh letting them uh keep that airport.
	Now there was a government of Afghanistan at the time, but he didn't negotiate with the government, he negotiated with the Taliban, right?
	And part of that negotiation was open up the prisons and let all the people that we arrested that we arrested get out, and they got out and they took over the government, and now for better or for worse, they run the government.
	It's absolutely far more authoritarian and dictator like than it was before we uh invaded, and now he thinks he's gonna get that uh uh that air base uh back.
	What did you think of the United States facilitating the uh bombing of a residential neighborhood in Doha Cutter, one of our allies.
	I mean, we know that that couldn't have happened without American intelligence and even American military support, because the cutter radar system is American, the cutter air defenses are American, and they were all down that day.
	Right, right.
	Well, if if if I was uh if I was uh living in uh uh Saudi Arabia or any other Middle Eastern country, uh I think what I would learn from that, not that they necessarily needed any reminder, is that you can't trust America.
	Uh you can't trust us uh because we were we will do what what Israel wants, uh, including in this case uh uh allowing a strike uh in in an Arab country that is um that is actually an ally.
	Expecting the U.S. to resume bombing Tehran as soon as Netanyahu decides to pull off another sneak attack.
	Yeah.
	No, no, it's it's it's it's more than possible that uh it's it's it's amazing to me that uh that we still seem to have unfinished business with with Iran uh from 1979 and and the hostage crisis uh under uh Jimmy Carter.
	It just seems as if, you know, there the the saying is uh, you know, as they said, you know, real men want to go to Tehran.
	This is uh, you know, in the in the Iraq war in back in 2003, you know, they had this grand scheme in the United States, the neocons did that that Iran was the ultimate prize to overthrow.
	Uh and this is just ambition to the point of of uh of foolishness, because you know, we've already seen the the disastrous nature of our intervention in Iraq.
	I mean, Iran is uh is a far more uh capable country uh militarily, much larger.
	Uh you know, we need to find a way to practice some diplomacy.
	Uh, but apparently uh the emphasis now is on the department of war.
	Uh and the department of state is basically just the a small component of our of our newly branded department of war.
	Both of which uh run by ardent Zionists.
	I wonder if anybody whispers uh sense into President Trump's ears, maybe Tulsi Gabbard when they let her in to the Oval Office.
	Colonel, it's a pleasure, my dear friend.
	Thank you very much for joining us.
	I hope you can come back uh and visit with us again soon.
	Yeah, thank you so much, Judge, for having me on again.
	Thank you.
	And keep writing those great essays.
	I devour them, and they are fabulous.
	Oh, thanks so much.
	Fabulous.
	All the best to you, sir.

▲