Read the full transcript of a conversation between Judge Andrew Napolitano and journalist Max Blumenthal on Judging Freedom Podcast titled “Israel’s Public Diplomacy” premiered March 18, 2025.
TRANSCRIPT:
Netanyahu’s Actions and Hostage Crisis
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, March 18, 2025. Max Blumenthal will be here with us in just a moment on Israel’s public diplomacy and the various quickly coming events around the world.
Max Blumenthal, welcome here my dear friend. It’s always a pleasure to be with you. As you know, even though we’re both suffering from head colds, I do want to ask you about the connection between Netanyahu and freedom of speech in America on college campuses. But before we get there, just a couple of the recent hot events. It appears that the IDF has invaded Gaza today and has killed over 400 civilians. What is Netanyahu trying to accomplish? The deaths of the hostages?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, he’s achieved that. Two hostages are dead after last night. Reportedly two more hostages preventing the release of Edan Alexander, who is a dual US-Israeli citizen, someone who was due to be released. He sabotaged Trump’s attempt to directly negotiate for the release of these hostages because the Trump administration tacitly acknowledged that Netanyahu did not want the hostages out.
Netanyahu saw the ceasefire deal as a recipe for disaster. It would have been a moral defeat for Israel. The Israeli military would have seen hundreds of Palestinian captives coming out of Israel’s jails, as well as Hamas maintaining its ability to maintain military force in Gaza. And it would have spelled political doom for Netanyahu to go to phase two, pull the Israeli military out and move towards a permanent ceasefire.
He would have just been kind of flying blind and heading into various corruption investigations. It would have put enormous pressure on his coalition. So the only way out is to slaughter tons and tons of babies. And that’s what they did last night. Israel slaughtered about 80 children in less than an hour last night. It was a surprise attack on a besieged, starving entity of people during Ramadan who have no air defense systems.
The Trump Administration’s Response
In order to supposedly take out Hamas operatives, they killed five mid-level Hamas political officials who are basically like working in a judiciary who have no operational role in the military. And they killed over 400 people and wounded close to 1,000. And the Trump administration took ownership of this savage assault on the defenseless population. Karoline Leavitt went out on Fox News and declared that Trump warned hell would break loose. And now hell is breaking loose.
Just confirming how owned this administration is, how cuffed they are by Netanyahu. And of course, they sidelined the hostage negotiator, Adam Bowler, who is himself a Jewish Zionist because he declared in a contentious interview with CNN Zionist enforcer Jake Tapper that “we’re not an agent of Israel.” Well, on the contrary, Adam, you have to be sidelined and we have to slaughter babies to save Netanyahu’s career on behalf of MAGA. And MAGA stands for Miriam Adelson’s Goals Achieved.
Now Donald Trump is declaring that this slaughterhouse in Gaza that he has unleashed on the civilian population is a message to Iran along with the war that he has just initiated in Yemen. So we’re heading straight towards war with Iran and a few MAGA figures, figures from the old MAGA or Miriam Adelson took total control of it. Ann Coulter, Marjorie Taylor Greene have acknowledged on Twitter/X that these wars are being waged by Donald Trump for a foreign country, the country that’s won every U.S. election since 1950, Israel.
Netanyahu’s Internal Politics
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well, I was going to ask you if Netanyahu had consulted directly or through channels with Trump, but you’ve already answered the question. This is no different from the Biden administration when Marco Rubio justified bombing the Houthis because they’re financed by Iran. It’s hard to believe that he didn’t recognize that Ukraine is financed by us and the Israelis are financed by us. And we have the same moral culpability as Netanyahu did when he slaughtered the babies last night.
Alistair Crook wrote a long piece over the weekend in which he argues that the division in Israeli society between the secular liberal Democrats lowercase D, and the right wing religious fanatics is deeper and wider than it’s ever been, and Netanyahu is making it worse. Do you accept that analysis?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I haven’t read Alastair’s piece. Netanyahu just fired his Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar. And this is being referred to by the liberal secular class in Israel as a Weimar moment, that Netanyahu is establishing a dictatorship by removing the gatekeepers who were not going from the security state, which is in itself a kind of fascist entity that presides over a military dictatorship over Palestinians.
By removing them, he’s removing all checks on his control over the state. Then you have the families of the hostages who maintain enormous sympathy within the Jewish Israeli population, who are not very happy about what Netanyahu authorized last night with his defense minister, who is another lackey. He removed his last defense minister because he wasn’t complicit enough, he wasn’t compliant enough.
So Netanyahu is constructing a state of lackeys and stooges around himself in order to preserve his career. He’s become the king of Israel. And so the families of the hostages simply want a deal. And they’re now beseeching Donald Trump to once again go around Netanyahu and negotiate directly with Hamas. This is the message that’s on. You can see headlines of hostage families beseeching Trump to go around the process that Netanyahu has constructed in order to get their loved ones out. And what has Donald Trump done? He signed on to Netanyahu’s regional wars. So they have very little hope. I think their hopes are dashed after last night.
US Military Actions in Yemen
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: What was gained by the US bombing the Houthis over the weekend?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, nothing for the United States, although maybe Pete Hegseth can enjoy being in the Situation Room.
It would be a lot different than being in the Fox Green Room. Maybe it’s more exciting for him to attack one of the poorest countries on the planet. They’re sending three aircraft carriers now to the Red Sea, and a tripwire has been established for war with Iran. This is being done completely on behalf of Israel.
The Yemeni movement of Ansar Allah is the only force in the world right now taking up arms, waging an actual humanitarian intervention to try to force Israel to abide by the terms of the ceasefire. And they announced that they would reimpose their blockade of the Red Sea, which has been largely bloodless because Israel was not allowing food or electricity into the Gaza Strip.
This is a textbook humanitarian intervention. And I’ve interviewed the spokesman, senior political officer for Ansar Allah, Mohammed Al Bukhaiti, who emphasizes they are doing this out of an ideological commitment to their conception of justice and they want to establish a world order in which the most oppressed have a voice.
So this is like an actual R2P intervention. The US has stepped in on behalf of Israel because the blockade was going to only target Israeli shipping. It was not going to target U.S. shipping. And it sent the USS Eisenhower and all of these U.S. soldiers into harm’s way to attack Yemen, to attack Sana’a. And the next stage is to attack Iran. As Donald Trump said, this is a message to Iran.
Escalation Towards Iran
And what is the message? Last night was a supposed surprise attack. Now the US has nuclear armed submarines in the Red Sea within striking distance of Tehran. And what the US is saying and has been saying is that if Iran does not accept another bogus deal with the United States, which the US broke, the Trump administration broke the JCPOA, that they will destroy Iran and they will do it without warning. It’s gunboat diplomacy and this will be the legacy of Donald Trump.
Just remember, Judge, when Joe Biden bear hugged Netanyahu, he pretty much signed the end of his political career. The bottom dropped out of his base in the Democratic Party and it helped doom Kamala Harris. Donald Trump is tightening that embrace of Israel and he’s swallowing the same poison pill. Just within two months of being in office, he may have already destroyed his America first agenda.
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well, it’s really Israel first. Here’s Mike Waltz on Sunday. This will aggravate you, but I’d like you to respond to it. I think it’s on one of the talk shows and it’s about Iran backing the Houthis.
[Clip of Mike Waltz discussing Iran’s support for the Houthis and the US response]
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: These guys do want war with Iran, there’s no question about it. The man of peace who says he wants the Nobel Peace Prize, Mike Waltz’s boss is unleashing the dogs of war.
The Israel Lobby’s Influence
MAX BLUMENTHAL: As Mike Waltz was always going to do. Mike Waltz is a pure product of the Israel lobby, has received hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of support from Israel lobby groups like AIPAC and NORPAC. That was what helped him get to the top of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Marco Rubio, same thing, received over a million dollars from the Israel Lobby. He was a poster child of the neoconservative movement.
And these figures are taking charge of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. While Donald Trump seems mostly interested in deportation PR stunts for his base because they’re not getting enough deportations. Where will this lead? Well, so far they have killed IRGC members inside Yemen. They’re lying to the American public about why shipping is being blockaded, whose shipping it is. It’s not US shipping. It’s being blockaded because the US has green lit Israel’s ceasefire violations.
It’s literal blowing up of the ceasefire. And when the ceasefire was being abided by in phase one, there was no blockade. So if they would just pressure Israel to abide by the ceasefire, we wouldn’t be on the way to a war with Iran. But Mike Waltz has an ulterior agenda, which is the agenda of Israel. The agenda is to destroy all regional challengers to Israel.
They’ve already destroyed Syria. They have a Sunni supremacist Turkish NATO run junta in power there which spent the last several days attacking Shia tribes in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, rather than actually confronting Israel, which just attacked the Syrian city of Daraa. They want to destroy Yemen because Yemen is acting independently. The Houthis are the most independent member of the axis of resistance. They’re not seeking a sign off from Iran. Most of their weapons are indigenous and they are the biggest threat.
Potential for Regional War
And they are the most ideologically motivated to take on Israel. And that will be a test run for an assault on Iran, attacking Iran’s nuclear sites. And how can Iran retaliate? Well, as Mike Waltz intimated, Iran can tank the global economy. It can attack oil installations across the Persian Gulf, it can hit US bases in Iraq, it can attack in ways that we don’t even understand yet. And it can also hit Israel, which would escalate into an atrocious war.
And this would be Trump’s legacy, with just three months in. It’s all because his administration, its most meaningful moves so far have been directed by Tel Aviv and not by the Trumpist base. The MAGA base has no say in the matter. And if they had not, if they hadn’t wanted this war, it wouldn’t matter. But fortunately for Trump, they’ve demonstrated themselves to be just a bunch of bootlickers, as George W. Bush’s base was after 9/11.
Israeli Influence on American Domestic Policy
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I want to talk to you about the Israeli influence in American domestic law enforcement. I want to talk to you about the summary deportation and violation of an express order from a federal judge of a physician who was a professor of medicine at Brown University, and about the arrest and transport to Louisiana of a Columbia grad student. But before I do, Professor John Mearsheimer on the root cause of all of this. When Secretary Rubio rescinds the green card of a person he probably never heard of because of statements the person made on the Columbia University campus last April.
This, of course, is a big deal here in New York. It should be a big deal everywhere because it’s an attack on freedom of speech like we haven’t seen in this country in many generations. But I suspect it is the Trump Department of Homeland Security and DOJ doing a favor for the president’s Zionist backers. The truth is, Judge, that the single greatest threat to freedom of speech in the United States at this point in time is Israel and its supporters here in the United States. Agree or disagree?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, I’ve been saying that for over a decade.
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Right.
The Erosion of First Amendment Rights
MAX BLUMENTHAL: What we’re seeing isn’t new. Israel’s been seeking to pass laws at the state level to abrogate the First Amendment and control American speech, to ban companies from exercising their ability to boycott Israel. And now it’s all coming to a head. I don’t know if this is the culmination, but I’m sure it’s not the culmination.
What we’re witnessing as we see sort of a demise or anxiety within global capitalism, which is integrated into Zionism or integrated with Zionism, is rising authoritarianism in the West. In the UK there are new laws like the National Security act, which have resulted in the jailing of dissidents, activists, journalists, simply because they have praised, for example, the Houthis for attempting to stop Israel’s siege of Gaza. Richard Medhurst, who’s a journalist, was just raided in Vienna. He’s being accused of, and he’s a British journalist, he’s being accused of being a member of Hamas.
We’re witnessing an out of control escalation across Europe. In the US there still is a First Amendment to contend with. So the Trump administration is trying to declare a kind of state of emergency in order to arrest green card holders, permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil, without any pretext. They’ve accused him of being a terror sympathizer, of being a terrorist, they’ve produced no evidence, they’ve accused him of no crime.
And now they’re invoking McCarthy era laws to try to justify his detention, stripping him of his green card and kicking them out of the country, all because he protested the mass slaughter of babies as a Palestinian at Columbia University. And this is all being done under orders from Miriam Adelson, who’s been hailed by the Jerusalem Post in the past month as a modern day Rothschild who is using her money to dictate the Trump administration’s policy.
I mean, they said it directly right there. It’s like a wet dream for anti-Semites to look at. This next will come citizens being arrested. I’m sure of it. It’s already happening in Europe.
Personal Experience with Surveillance
And Judge, we talked in our last interview about my interrogation or questioning at Dulles International Airport. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was about. I was trying to be conservative in my assessment, but now it’s clear to me. I was presented with a list of names of Palestine Solidarity activists. It was 3am it was hard for me to remember. I remembered one name is Mohammed Khan. They’re handwritten. That name very well could have been Mahmoud Khalil, but it was very clear that I was being given names that were furnished to the Trump administration, to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE by a fascistic Zionist group, which is collecting lists.
I mean, it’s been credited by the Guardian, other news outlets, with collecting the lists that the Trump administration is relying on for arrest and deportation solely based on political activity. What is their argument? That there is no due process and no freedom of speech for permanent residents or visa holders. Well, once they erode that right, then the First Amendment is completely eroded and they’ll move in on the rest of us.
They already moved in on me to some degree by holding me and questioning me to collect intelligence on their more immediate targets. So, yes, and they’re doing this on behalf of Israel. It’s never been more obvious. We are living under a kind of Zionist occupation and our most cherished freedoms are being taken away.
It reminds me distinctly of the post 9/11 era where there were mass arrests of Muslim activists for supporting Palestine. They were thrown in jail. I’m thinking about the Holy Land foundation directors, Samuel Eri and so many others. And a blitz of pro-war propaganda on outlets like Fox News. Turn on Fox News now. They’ve removed Tucker. It’s a pro-war extravaganza and you have an entire base of bootlicking cultists who will support anything the president does.
The one thing that’s missing, it also kind of reminds me of the COVID era a little bit. The one thing that’s missing is what Paul Wolfowitz called weeks before 9/11, “a catastrophic and catalyzing event” which would give the president a free hand to impose a state of emergency. Oh, good for Donald Trump seeks and they can make that happen.
Closing Remarks
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: On that scary note, we’ll end. Max, I had other things I wanted to talk to you about, but we’ll end.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Sorry I went long.
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: No, you’re terrific. And my voice is scratchy and people are tired of listening to it. But thank you, Max. Thank you for your courage and thank you for your analysis. These are very, very perilous times. You and Aaron and Anya and the people that come on this show and the people at the Gray Zone continue to speak out. Otherwise, we’re all cooked.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, thanks for letting me get that off my chest. And yeah, thanks.
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: All the best.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Talk to you soon.
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Thank you. See you next week. Coming up later today, live from Eastern Ukraine or Western Russia, Patrick Lancaster at 2:00 and at 3:00, Karen Kwakowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
Related Posts
