Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi : Can Israel Destroy Hamas?

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Phil Giraldi : Can Israel Destroy Hamas?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi there, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, January 24th, 2024. Phil Giraldi joins us now for his regular Wednesday session with us. Phil, it's a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Phil, last night we had on Aaron Mete, a young colleague of Max Blumenthal, whose views are identical to ours on the tragedy in Gaza. And I said to him, are Israel's two stated goals of defeating Hamas and returning the hostages compatible? And he said, well, those are Israel's stated goals. Israel's real goal is far beyond defeating Hamas. Israel's real goal is from the river to the sea.

Do you agree with that? Yeah, I think that is Israel's real goal. And if you had followed Benjamin Netanyahu's career, I think you would have seen a lot of instances where the truth was kind of leaked out in a certain way by certain language that was used and so on and so forth I mean Israel has de facto control over the entire area right now from the river to the sea the question is how do we get we speaking as an Israeli or an Israeli governor uh is is basically how do we get rid of the Palestinians and make this a 100 Jewish state uh and ethnically Jewish um and um that is what we see playing out right now. I mean, when Netanyahu, you know, I mean, defied Biden when Biden was, two days ago, was recommending the two-state solution

yet again. That tells you everything you need to know. Netanyahu feels strong enough to be able to deliver a gut punch to Joe Biden. And, you know, that shows you what the relationship actually is and what the ultimate objective is. The ultimate objective is to get rid of the pals. So when they say their objective is to degrade Hamas and to release the hostages, my question is, are those two goals essentially incompatible? Your answer is those are not their goals. I'm is those are not their goals. Their goals are not their goals, but the stated goals, I think, are not compatible in the sense that the arithmetic on this doesn't The hostages would be released because that's what Hamas has in its deck of cards.

And the hostages will be released if there is some comprehensive type agreement that's negotiated by people that can be relied upon to actually put the heat on Israel if they fail to comply. So that ain't going to work. And it's also becoming increasingly clear, and I think if you're seeing Colonel McGregor later today, he will probably also be saying that getting rid of Hamas is proving problematical. You're going to have real real problems getting them out their popularity among the palestinian population is is uh soaring and uh essentially uh how are you going to get them out and that that means killing finding all of them and killing all of them which seems to be rather problematic. I asked Aaron yesterday if the attitude of the Israeli people about Hamas changed on October 7th, and if on October 6th it was only the government that had this maniacal, fanatical attitude about them, but the people didn't. His answer, I'm going to play the answer for you. I suspect you'll agree. His answer

surprised me. There used to be a peace movement inside Israel. Now it's pretty much dead. And it was dead long before October 6th. That country has gone so far over into the extremes. And I think that's the inevitable result when you base a state around supremacy of one ethnic group over its indigenous inhabitants, and you are founded on ethnic cleansing, and your survival, your identity as a state relies on perpetuating that ethnic cleansing. It's inevitable it's going to just go over to the extreme rather than see any sense. That's certainly what's happened with Israel. Do you agree with that, Phil Giraldi? Yeah, I agree with that, but I would add something to it, which is essentially that the Israeli population, as has the American population, have been heavily propagandized by those supporters

of Israel, the Israel lobby, if you want to call it that, and basically have been sold a bill of goods about what's been going on and how often do you hear all these Palestinians are terrorists? We kill the Palestinian babies because they'll grow up to be terrorists. I mean, this is propaganda of the crudest time, kind, but it's been repeated over and over and over again. And it's convinced a lot of people who otherwise would consider this rubbish, both in Israel and the United States, that this is maybe the true story. Can Israel defeat Hamas? Well, again, physically, it's beginning to look like they can't.

Because there are two Hamases. One is the armed militia that is doing the fighting in Gaza right now and they're the people that basically believe in what Hamas is doing they are Hamas in their heads and they are believers in terms of what Hamas is trying to do to uh to liberate the israeli uh despotic control and uh so you got two different uh hamas you might wind up killing many of the shooters but you're still not going to get rid of the people who've just been convinced that they've been fed a lot of bull uh over a number of years and that this is a cause worth supporting so someone who agrees with what you said, essentially, is Israeli retired Major General and former Chief of Staff General Gazi Eisenkot,

who is a member of the war cabinet, who said on national television in Israel, the only way we get the hostages back is a permanent ceasefire. And by the way, P.S., it's time for Netanyahu to go and it's time for elections in the next two months. This, of course, caused Netanyahu to go on national television and give one of his bombastic speeches, I have to say no to my friends. I guess he was referring to General Eisenkot. He may also have been referring to Blinken and Biden, who, you know, tepidly have been saying we need a two-state solution.

But my question to you is, is this manifesting the existence of a serious fissure in the Netanyahu government when somebody like General Eisenkot makes a statement like that. Yeah, I think it does suggest that a lot of people who are less outspoken probably are thinking the same way. And then certainly some of the vibes one is getting off of the people who are demonstrating to get the hostages freed, they're highly critical of what Netanyahu is doing. So if there's not a peace movement, and I agree with Mate that there isn't per se, there are a lot of people who are suddenly starting to think a little bit. And there's a dissent coming. And when a general who's part of the War Cabinet feels free or feels capable of speaking out the way he did, I mean, that's quite astonishing.

It is. It is. I suppose it would be like Joe Biden having a war cabinet and General Milley being in the war cabinet and going on CBS News saying it's time to stop the war. It would be the rough equivalent of that if that were to happen here. Do you think the Netanyahu government recognizes that there are limits to the IDF brutality before the world says enough is enough? Or do you think the world, because of the PR war that Israel wages, will never say enough is enough? Well, I think, first of all, if you're looking at someone like a personality like Netanyahu, I would say that he does have no concept of enough is enough until all the Palestinians that he wants to drive out of the country or kill are gone. I think there's always going to be a residual Palestinian workforce in the mind of someone like Netanyahu that'll come over to Israel and do the backbreaking agricultural work and that sort of stuff. But I think that's the extent of Netanyahu's tolerance of the Palestinians. And I think it's genuine. It's genuine in the

way he thinks. And a lot of Israelis are thinking the same same way but as this war goes on and Israel's image in the world uh gets more and more damage to the point where Israel is already uh about as badly damaged as one can imagine uh there might be some people who are willing to second think about Israel's place in the world and what has to be and uh certainly treating in in this you know century in this time after all of the history that's gone on for the last hundred years to to be thinking in terms of palestinians being subhumans as many israeli government officials have been willing to say. This is just something that's so unacceptable that I think the message we'll be getting through to some people in Israel and hopefully more in the United States, that this is just flat out wrong.

Here's the scene outside of Prime Minister Netanyahu's house, his official residence, two days, two nights ago, two evenings ago. This demonstration held near the home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night. His spokesperson says Netanyahu met with some hostage families yesterday after he rebuffed a Hamas hostage proposal over the weekend. Just hours after that meeting, the news outlet Axios reported the Israeli ceasefire offer. Now, that report says Israel's war cabinet approved the proposal 10 days ago. A CNN report today adds that Israel is offering senior Hamas leaders a chance to leave Gaza as part of the offer. Axios says Israel is waiting for a response from Hamas. There is no Israeli government comment on the reports officially. One of the hostage family members

with whom Prime Minister Netanyahu met is a veterinarian, a female, whose son was in the military, who was slowly gassed to death in one of the Hamas tunnels by the IDF, not by Hamas. The scene was gruesome because of the damage to his body caused by his efforts to escape the chamber that he was in when he knew that it was poison gas. He did not know at the time of his death that it was his own comrades that had introduced the poison gas into the chamber where he was. Two other hostages, not members of the IDF, suffered the same fate. How cold and cruel and monstrous can Netanyahu be as to have permitted, authorized, or defended such despicable behavior? Well, it's interesting to note that, I mean, the hostages that have been visibly killed, all six of them that I know of have been killed by the israeli army

and so that's that's again that is coloration uh to the narrative that is developing where where people are starting to to have second thoughts about what's going on and why it's going on and how it's going on and um that's that's got to be good if it puts pressure on netanyahu but the fact is uh you know this is horrific this is awful stuff um and i'm thinking of the other hostages the three of that were uh waving the white flag and were were shot down dead uh a few days ago a week ago right and uh you know know, it's just, this is so horrific. And we're watching it in a sense in prime time. And they're getting away with it. And Biden is enabling them to get away with it. And this is what's really scary. This is not what our country is supposed to stand

for. And this is not what we expect from a president of the United States, although we've had some pretty awful presidents. But this is just horrific. And there has to be some kind of end to this. And I was running through a list of the various candidates that have been involved in trying to become the next president of the U.S. and I was trying to figure out, are any of these people on this list actually willing to do the right thing about what's going on in Gaza? And the only candidate, potential candidate, I could come up with was the Jewish Jewish woman who was um uh with the Green Party and none of the Democrats not other Republicans right you're right Trump Trump uh

I don't want to get too deep into politics but Trump has stated uh a willingness to bring back troops to get out of NATO to reduce our military footprint, but he has also stated that he would be wedded at the hip and would be an unabashed supporter of Israel. So I don't know what he and the White House would be doing in this particular environment. But do you think that that Netanyahu is aware of Biden's weakness and is setting a trap for him so that if there is a wider Middle Eastern conflagration and he needs American active physically present military support, whether it's jets or whether it's troops on the ground, he'll get it. Yeah, I think that Netanyahu definitely smells blood in the water. And Biden is weak. I mean, Biden is weak on so many levels over so many issues that we could spend the rest of the show talking about that. But the fact is that Netanyahu has the support of the Israel lobby in the United States,

which is the most powerful foreign policy lobby in the U.S. And he has any sum of money he needs to subvert our political system further to send further messages to Biden.iden yeah he he does he's got all that and i was really uh revolted uh yesterday or maybe the day before that uh when biden made this comment about how uh our troops who are being attacked um in syria and iraq uh in Syria and Iraq, he said something effective. If even one of them is killed, he suggested that Iran would have to be attacked, even though he provided no evidence that Iran had instigated these actions. I mean, this is incredible. I mean, why are the troops there? Are they there to be targets so as to instigate and have a fake justification for war? The Iraqi government has said, get the hell out. The troops are being attacked in Iraq from within Iraq. The troops are firing at the people they think are attacking them in Iraq. What are we doing there?

Well, that's maybe another big question. We're in Syria and Iraq illegally. We have military bases in both countries. The legitimate governments of both those countries and their parliaments have asked the United States to remove the troops. There is no particular rule that they should be playing. They claim they're there to fight terrorists, but we all know that terrorist is an incredibly flexible word in the White House lexicon. So this is all a lie. This is a fraud. And they're there basically to serve as a warning to Iran, as a tripwire. And that's what it's all about. And why are we wanting to go after Iran?

Because Israel wants us to do it. I was just about to ask you, why do the neocons want a Middle Eastern war? Because Netanyahu has this crazy belief that Iran has an atomic bomb that it's going to drop on Tel Aviv, and therefore Netanyahu wants the U.S. to destroy Iran's military capabilities. Is that it in a nutshell? Yeah, it's that, but it's also the other part of the nutshell is that Israel has 200 secret nuclear weapons themselves. Has you know so has the UN approved that no and they've never been inspected um they they're not party Israel is not a party to the the nuclear uh uh pact and uh it's uh this is some and U.S government this is the beauty of it. This is how deep it goes.

U.S. government officials are not allowed to mention that Israel has a secret nuclear arsenal, even though the whole world knows it. And even Israel has conceded it a couple of times. This is not the first question I would ask him, I would interrogate him about lying under oath, swearing that it was a matter of American emergency national security interests that Israel get $100 million and it wasn't time to go to Congress. I don't know how he can answer that. But one of the second or third questions I would ask him, what would Tony Blinken say? Mr. Secretary, isn't it true that Israel has atomic weapons and you and everybody else in the government know about it? How the hell does he answer that? I would love to hear it.

What do you think is the likely response to Biden's persistent, they've been six now, attacks on the Houthis? I think it's up to seven as of today. Okay. All right. Maybe the seventh was since we came on air and streamed that show. I don't know. It could be. Well, I think we are going to see attacks every day.

And again, this is one of these uh the fables uh they're saying um this is to protect international shipping and sea lanes and this kind of thing but really it all again comes back to gaza and the the houthis are attacking we're attacking only uh israeli owned vessels and is ships that were bound for Israel. And that was the limits on what they were doing. But now they're attacking U.S. ships and U.K. ships, and who knows who else will get into it. And Biden has again hinted that this could be escalated. And of course, the neocons will rally around the flag. I mean, we've already heard even before the Houthis attacked any ship, who was it? How could I forget?

Lindsey Graham, Senator Graham, saying it's time to attack them, take on their oil fields. Their oil fields are unprotected. I think I'm paraphrasing him fairly accurately. I don't know. Is that drumbeat going to get to old Joe? Do you think that's his goal? Do you think he wants to run? I do. But you have more knowledge about this than I do. You think he wants to run as a wartime president, even if he's concocted the war? Well, he wants to look like a war leader and a strong president, that's for sure. But the fact is, he's not. And, you know, I don't know if he's thought these things through. I wonder who actually advises him. Blinken sometimes, when you see the two of them together,

Blinken looks kind of terrified as Joe is talking. And it's just a great mystery. And the fact that this guy at his age and giving his clear mental issues is going to be likely the Democratic candidate this year and could win the presidency again is scary. Sure is. Phil Giraldi, thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for all the time and thank you for all the analysis. I love these Wednesday afternoons with you and look forward to the next one. Well, thank you very much. It was good to be on again. Of course. Coming up in just a few minutes at 3.30 Eastern, Colonel Douglas McGregor, and at 4.15 Eastern, Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!