Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi: Antisemitism and the Israeli Government.

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

Phil Giraldi: Antisemitism and the Israeli GovernmentSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm privileged to see a draft of it. I don't even know if it's been published yet. The working title is The Anti-Semitic Moment. But this is an issue that's like the third rail of American politics, but it has to be addressed. When someone criticizes the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu or the excessive use of force or the slaughter in Gaza, as you and I and a lot of our colleagues have done, we run the risk of being called anti-Semitic, by which that means hatred of Jews. It's all nonsense. But is this part of the plan to neutralize opposition to the Netanyahu government by tarnishing us with a brush of

paint that is difficult to wash off? Well, I would say absolutely yes. I begin my article by quoting a former Israeli government minister who said that it's pretty simple. This is all a trick, that if the United States is saying or doing something, or American citizens are saying they're doing something that Israel does not like, the anti-Semitism label comes out almost immediately. And you're seeing right now in the media, a flood of articles about anti-Semitism label comes out almost immediately. And you're seeing right now in the media a flood of articles about anti-Semitism surging and so on and so forth. These articles are very light on evidence. If some Palestinian is maybe standing in front of Columbia University and protesting about what the Israelis are doing to his people

i find that legitimate free speech but if a if a jewish student is offended that becomes an anti-semitic incident and this government minister also said that they have the same tool that they use or a similar tool uh when dealing with the europeans if the europeans come out with anything that israel finds offensive or disagrees with they Europeans if the Europeans come out with anything that Israel finds offensive or disagrees with they immediately cite the Holocaust and that has the same dampening effect that accusing Americans of being anti-semites in that the history obviously of Europe and the Jews lends itself to this kind of accusation. But basically, this minister was saying this is all a trick. And I think if you follow what's going on in the media, you will see that that's

exactly what's going on. It's being utilized as a tool to silence criticism of Israel, while Israel is carrying out a genocide, I don't think there's any doubt about that, against the Palestinians. What is anti-Semitism? Well, this is, of course, the trick element to it. Historically speaking, anti-Semitism was what hatred or dislike of Jews. And I would agree that's a legitimate critique of those kinds of views. But what's happened is that in the last, let's say, decade, this has been extended to not be just hatred or dislike of Jews. It's anything that's critical of the state of Israel. And the reasoning used behind this is that, oh, Israel is the Jewish state. Well, you know, Israel, there is no such thing as a religious state in a lot of ways.

And the fact is that Israelrael is a state if you want to call it that that discriminates against other religions so if you want to go down that road you're getting into another mess but the point is that calling israel the jewish state and zionism the uh manifestation of that they've turned z Zionism, criticism of Zionism and Israel, into a hate crime. And they're utilizing it in the same way, that this is a way of eliminating the criticism. And then they take that hate crime and use it to silence people. So if students at Columbia University or the University of Pennsylvania want to chant out loud, from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free, a legitimate form of political protest,

in my view, absolutely protected political speech. The powers that be that run the levers of government that give money to universities want to threaten the universities unless they punish the students for saying that. On the other hand, if Jewish students were to say, from the river to the sea, greater Israel shall be, there obviously is either indifference or applauding to it. puts its thumb on the freedom of speech in order to enhance the government's narrative and suppress the government's critics. Yeah, well, that's exactly what it's doing. It's in effect defining an issue in such a way as to get the answer that it wants to get. Now, I would point out, for example, there's been a lot of

mouthing coming out of the White House and from Congress about how anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are both terrible things. Well, the reality is that Palestinian and Muslim groups complaining about what's going on in Palestine are getting shut down at the extended, I believe, to the University of Pennsylvania. And only the Muslim and Palestinian groups are getting shut down. I haven't seen a single report of a Hillel house at a major American university getting shut down for supporting what Israel is doing. So this is being run in a very one-way direction, and the whole narrative is being shaped in a one-way that puts all the onus on the Palestinians, whereas we know there's been history of this going back 76 years with people being kicked out of their homes and killed in villages and so on and so forth. Certainly, the Palestinians are not receiving it.

And, of course, there's been violence against the Israelis, the Jewish Israelis, too. So let's try to get some balance on this story. Is Israel losing the PR war when you see on the Internet women and children being slaughtered, hospitals being destroyed, schools being demolished, mosques and Catholic churches being wrecked. And the newest low, Phil, I know you have experience in the military. I would defy anybody to tell me how this is a legitimate military objective. Bombing cemeteries. Yeah, and I think there have been two incidents in particular well i think israel has lost uh the struggle to present its case in in a sympathetic way this has been demonstrated by votes in the united nations and opinion polls opinion polls in the united states are running uh strongly in some demographics against israel so this is a real thing and there are two things in the past week that I think were devastating to Israel's reputation. The first one was where the three Jewish hostages who managed

to escape from Hamas and had basically stripped down to show that they were carrying no weapons and their hands were up in the air and they were holding a white flag. And Israeli soldiers killed all three of them. These were Jewish hostages. And they were clearly no threat to the soldiers. So this is normal routine on what's going on in Gaza. People are being shot just because of what they maybe appear to be. So that was one of them. And the other one was, of course, the only Catholic church in Gaza.

There was a mother and a daughter, both Catholics, who were sheltering in part of the church. And Israeli snipers got them in their sights and shot them both dead. Were they a threat? The Pope even complained about that. And the Pope has been somewhat diffident about saying things about Israel. Even the Pope got into it. Paul Jay But how can the Israelis—we know they're losing the PR war because these images are horrific, but from the perspective of Defense Minister Gallant or Prime Minister Netanyahu, how could they possibly defend things like killing three of their own hostages,

one of whom they had to chase for a while before they got him? These were all young men in their 20s, the three of them. How can they defend snipers killing a mother and a baby under any circumstances? How can they defend bombing a cemetery unless it's just to cause heartache in the hearts of those whose loved ones are buried there i mean this behavior a is indefensible and b

do you hear anybody in the american government condemning this anybody well a couple of progressives in the Democratic Party, to their credit, have said things and been come down hard by the leadership of the party because of that. And I would also add to what you just said, the one hostage that they had pursued to kill was yelling help to them in Hebrew. I mean, this is incredible. This defies any kind of conception of humanity. I served in the military, and this is a military that is out of control and has been told just to go and kill people. And what's not even being reported at all in the United States media and European media is what's going on on the West Bank, where we have settlers being given automatic rifles and they're going around and shooting Palestinians.

I believe the number is 200 to 300 have been killed. And there have been thousands of arrests where there have been no charges. These are just detaining people for the sake of detaining them because maybe they looked at a soldier the wrong way or said something that how terrible it is, what's going on in does it i mean this is this is inhumanity at a level that we have not seen uh maybe since the second world war the um machine guns that you talk about are automatic weapons so it's not one trigger pull and one round. It's one trigger pull and the rounds come out as a fusillade for as long as you hold your finger down. Such devices are unlawful everywhere in the United States of America. for police and for the military, and the Biden administration authorized manufacturers of them to sell them to Israel. They deliver them to Israel, and they send the bill to the Defense Department. So the anti-gun Joe Biden has given machine guns to Israeli civilians with which to slaughter Palestinians in the West Bank, and that's exactly what's going on there. How much longer do you think this can last before it results in some

intervention, some military intervention on the part of government actors in the region? That's a difficult question to answer because I think you have to consider what might be potential further actions on the part of Israel that would precipitate a response. Now, I think one thing we're looking right in the face right now, you have nearly 2 million people, the full population of Gaza are displaced, and most of open the border, force open the border and force a lot of these people into the Sinai and into Egypt, Egypt would have to respond in some way. And I'm not sure what that would constitute. And the other thing I'm looking at very closely is there's a lot of rhetoric going on, coming out of the Israeli government, talking about what they're going to do to Lebanon. And Lebanon is clearly a potential player in this situation. And there's been some shooting back and forth across the border. And there have also been regular attacks by the Israeli Air Force on Syria, on Damascus

Airport, Aleppo Airport. And they've also claimed to be hitting targets that are Iranian targets inside Syria. So these situations can easily escalate. And certainly Lebanon has formidable military resources that beat the Israelis once not so long ago when the Israelis were occupying the southern part of the country. And Iran is also formidable. So this could go in all kinds of different directions. And it seems that the Israelis are relying on the U.S. as being their trump card. And I use that word Trump advisedly, to basically intervene on their behalf and fight a war for them. And this is where it really gets scary because the United States is already in this up to its eyeballs. It's providing money. It's providing weapons. It's providing political cover, probably the most important element here and the United States wouldn't be going too much

farther to actually actively intervene especially given the rhetoric coming out of the Pentagon and coming out of Joe Biden do you see American troops on the ground uh fighting Israel's fighting with the IDF against Israel's enemies there are already American troops on the ground in advisory capacities, and the question is, when does advisory become a little more active? I think there was one press report, I don't know how credible it was, that said that some of the early Israeli army interventions into Gaza, right after October 7th, that they had American special forces advisors accompanying them to kind of take a look at the terrain and what was going on. I don't know how true that is.

Can Israel defeat Hamas, or is Hamas an idea that cannot be destroyed by force of arms? Yeah, Hamas is an idea that has grown infinitely stronger as a result of the Israeli repression. It puts the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and the dehumanizing of the Palestinians and the genocide being conducted against them puts it all right on the front page. And this is basically something that will go on, will be in the minds of many people in the Middle East and elsewhere, even if Israel succeeds in killing what they consider to be most of the Hamas actual fighters. This will continue. This will be in people's heads. As we speak, the leader of Hamas, name escaping me, is in Egypt negotiating with President al-Sisi. What do you think he's negotiating for, for the Palestinian people to be accepted in Egypt, for Egypt to use force of arms to expel the IDF from Gaza? What can al-Sisi and the Egyptians do for Hamas?

Yeah, well, that's it. There are a couple of options, one might say. And certainly the Egyptians have a capable military. And again, this is where you have to look at the backstory. The backstory in this case is that the United States subsidizes the Egyptian government and the Egyptian military and security services to the tune of more than $2 billion a year. And that money basically is there on the table so that Egypt maintains at least a peaceful relationship

or a functional relationship with Israel. Now this whole thing can be thrown out of kilter, and suddenly you have an active enemy on your southern border that has to be reckoned with. So this is something that might come out of it. But the question, of course, is what do you do with these 2 million displaced people? You really have to be considering some kind of statement that gives these people legitimacy, that gives them some hope for the future, and gives them some kind of government that can deal with Israel, I hate to say it, as as a partner where basically they're occupying the same land uh the question is how do we make this a decent relationship where the palestinians are treated with respect

and that are are given the right to you know govern themselves this is this is key to the whole problem and uh some of some of the thebskulls of Washington, even on occasion, recognize this. I'm going to switch gears slightly and take a bigger picture look with you, if I can. The war in Ukraine is over. The American government is not going to give President Zelensky any more money. Those of our colleagues who know about this kind of stuff have told us that maybe there's another month's worth of supplies and cash in the pipeline. But beyond that, he's pretty much on his own. President Putin knows this. The war in Gaza has reached the horrific depths that you have just so described. The American government says we're wedded at the hip to Israel, we're its best friend,

and we're going to help Ukraine for as long as it takes. What, if any, lessons has the government learned in 2023 from these two wars? Well, the lesson actually goes back longer than that. I would place the complete, I don't know, self-destruction of democracy and republicanism in America, certainly back to the consequences of 9-11 and the war on terror. This is when we went completely off the rails in terms of self-designating the United States as the rulemaker for the rest of the world and the sheriff who will restore order. This was nonsense from the beginning and continues to be nonsense. The United States should only use force, should only go to war in situations where it is actually threatened and where the use of force is actually a solution to the problem. If the United States had used that standard

when first getting involved in Ukraine, it would have backed off immediately and done its best to reconcile the two parties. The United States, if using the same standard in dealing with Israel and its neighbors, had pursued the same objectives, you might have a very different Middle East in which people can actually coexist. But the United States has always seen the simple solution, find some proxy that can be called a greatest friend and ally. We have so many of these greatest friends and allies. And the fact is that none of these situations warranted any of this action based on America's actual self-interest. America should be helping Americans who are facing a lot of issues right now,

and instead they're looking for wars to fight overseas. And what do we do? We don't spread democracy, we spread violence and death. Neither of us is a fan of Henry Kissinger, but he had a point when he said it's dangerous to be an American enemy. It's fatal to be and rely on America as a friend. Yep, you had that right. Bill Giraldi, always a pleasure, my dear friend. I hope we see you again before the end of the year, but I don't think we'll see you before Christmas. So Merry Christmas to you, to to your family to your friend behind you it gets a lot of attention from our uh our viewers your wonderful dog and uh thanks for coming on with us all the best well merry christmas to you and to and to all our friends out there

watching this i mean these are dire times for all of us and it's important that all of us kind of figure out what it's about and pull together. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you've been helping us do that. Thank you, Phil. We'll see you next week. Coming up at four o'clock, Mike Benz on some of the craziness that the CIA is up to, and you won't believe what some of it is. And it has to do with rock music. Four o'clock Eastern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.