Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi: Does Trump Care About Gaza?

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

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gentle guidance and encouragement to create these incredible changes for yourself and see what good can come from them. Trust me, listening on Audible can help you reach the goals you set for yourself. Start listening today when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash wonderyca. That's audible.com slash wonderyca. That's audible.com slash wonderyca. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, January 22, 2025. Phil Giraldi joins us now. Phil, no matter what we're talking about, it's always a pleasure to be able to pick your brain, and I thank you very much for it. Is the so-called ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, a true ceasefire or an inauguration pause? Well, I think it's maybe something in between. I think it has a certain amount of substance, at least in Trump's thinking, in terms of his desire to be depicted as a man of peace,

which I don't particularly buy into. I do not think it's a ceasefire in any real sense, because I think there is certainly some evidence that there were negotiated side issues that were not part of the actual agreement which were intended to uh soften the blow for uh netanyahu and the israelis and i was specifically referring to things that would make it politically uh easier for Netanyahu. And that Netanyahu, as far as he's going, has made it very clear to his supporters that he doesn't intend for this ceasefire to be a ceasefire beyond the first phase, or even if it gets that far. So I think we have a clear answer from Netanyahu that it's not the real thing. All right. I want to get into the side deal or what we believe is the side deal

in just a minute. But Haaretz reported just about 15 minutes ago that a minister A minister close to Netanyahu, wouldn't say who, said expect the war to resume decisively as soon as the first phase is over. Now, that brings us to the, actually, again, before the side deal. Has the main deal even been reduced to writing and published? Or is Netanyahu keeping it under wraps? Well, there apparently is a text that's been circulating that some journalists have claimed to see. New York Times claimed to have seen it. And I think it's just a bare outline of the, what is it, the three or four steps that they expect to take place for the transition to where um gaza will be or at least some of the residents of gaza will be able to go home and israel will have certain

prerogatives in terms of maintaining security the interesting thing aspen, I think I found that one of the Israeli newspapers I was looking at yesterday was saying that the United States will be kind of the monitoring power in terms of, you know, who is breaking the accord or not breaking the accord and where it's going and that kind of thing. Now, that opens the door for all kinds of mischief has uh amos hockstein effectively been replaced by stephen whitcroft uh that would appear to be the case although i haven't seen in writing uh anyone saying that that's occurred hockstein obviously was a uh a creature of the Biden administration, and one would think he went out with them, since we all, I think, agree, or many of us agree now, that the Biden administration on this whole business in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza,

and the West Bank was colluding with the Israeli government on behalf of Biden. Do you think when Trump said they'll be held to pay, he had that in mind bilaterally? Hey, Bibi, they'll be held to pay if you don't start releasing those hostages. Or did he just mean it to Hamas, which has already endured hell for 18 months? Well, I've seen two interpretations of it. One of them obviously is very favorable to Israel, which is saying that there would be hell to pay because he's admonishing netanyahu uh because netanyahu is doing such a bad job of selling this uh genocide uh it's it's bad for israel it's bad for the united states it's bad for everybody that's one theory of course the other one is that the hell States, if possible, I don't see how,

would be playing an even more active role in, quote, freeing the hostages by putting military and other pressure on Hamas. Were you surprised when Trump posted that clip of our friend and colleague Jeff Sachs uh speaking of Netanyahu in very dark very critical terms I I was indeed surprised although again this kind of to a certain extent fits the the first interpretation, which is that Trump was sending a cannon shot across the bow of Netanyahu and telling him that he had better do something to make this thing more palatable. And then, of course, we had the visit from Trump's own man, in which a similar narrative is being expressed, that there was a pressure, considerable pressure put on Netanyahu to come to this agreement, which has been sitting on the table, as we know, for 13 months.

And why was Netanyahu not invited to the inauguration after his wife had made preparations to come? Well, possibly because if his plane had to stop somewhere else for refueling, he might get arrested. It's a story I've been seeing because of the ICC warrant. And that's one theory. But of course, I think there were, you know, obviously, issues of saving face on his side, because there is, you know, there is a, if you go to the Israeli media, which I know you've been, you've been watching, there is a narrative going around very strongly inside Israel, that this was a defeat for Israel, having to this at all so maybe Netanyahu was uh not wanting to show the flag uh too much I I don't know you know who who is how can you examine what

goes on in the head of somebody like uh uh Bibi Netanyahu uh or Joe Biden i mean this is uh this is yeah is netanyahu trustworthy or does he have a history of going back on his word oh he's a complete liar i mean virtually everything that he says is is spun um does he go back on his word well what word been? I mean, every time he gets involved in another part of the Middle East and there is some kind of agreement going on, as there was with the truce in southern Lebanon, all of a sudden Netanyahu is interpreting this to be a violation of the truce by Hezbollah. And again, the action in Syria. Now he's occupying part of southern Syria. And again, there are fake narratives to support what he's doing. And anything he does in Gaza will have a fake narrative, just like what's going on today on the West Bank,

where the Israeli military and the settlers are continuing to harass and dispossess and kill Palestinians. Here he is on January 18, talking about a second phase of war. Cut number five. Towards the next stages of the agreement, we are holding on to some significant assets so that we can bring back all of the hostages and in order to accomplish all the goals of the war. Both President Trump and President Biden have provided full backing to Israel's right to resume fighting, to resume combat if Israel reaches the conclusion that the negotiations over the second stage are pointless. I truly appreciate that. I also appreciate the decision of President Trump to lift all the remaining restrictions on the providing of essential munitions and weapons to the state of Israel. If we need to resume combat, we will do so in new ways,

and we will do so with tremendous force. There you have it. My understanding of the side deal, please correct or modify it, is that there are three parts to it. The first is that even if the IDF illegally re-enters Gaza, Trump will back them up. The second is that if the Jewish settlers resume settling the West Bank, Trump will back them up. And just as pernicious, in my view, and I suspect in yours as well, though below the radar, because most of the American public doesn't know what the hell this is, the sanctions will be lifted on Pegasus, a software produced by an Israeli company called

NSO, this nefarious zero-click software which allows the perpetrator or owner of it, whether it's the FBI or whether it's your next-door neighbor, to access the contents of every computer, desktop, laptop, mainframe, mobile, without tricking you into clicking onto a link. Is that your understanding as well? Yeah, that's my understanding. But the first phase also includes what Netanyahu just outlined, which basically is if Israel will have a free hand to resume combat operations as part of this response. But the Pegasus thing is important. I mean, this is a software that was developed uniquely by Israel to enable governments to spy on their citizens. The FBI was using it. And the fact is now it was sanctioned by Biden, one of the only decent things he did,

because of this ability to go after anyone at any time with no indication that you have been gone at. So that's what it was all about. The FBI bought this stuff from this Israeli manufacturer during the Trump administration without telling Trump they used it. When Biden found out about it, he ordered them to stop using it. He told them to destroy it. They didn't destroy it. I know this sounds like it's out of The Sopranos. They are storing it in a warehouse in New Jersey. But he also, and this is where I fully agree with you, instructed his Department of Commerce to ban the importation and the licensing

of this stuff. Why in his right mind would Trump want to lift the sanctions on this? If this stuff proliferates in the United States, they'll spy on Trump himself. It's because it was, my feeling is, it was an incentive item thrown into the basket of gifts to Netanyahu coupled with warning that he had to behave in this case. And this is a big incentive item for the Israeli government coupled with warning that he had to behave in this case. And this is a big incentive item for the Israeli government because this company and its hope is a Mossad, Israeli Military Intelligent Front.

And they sell you this software and they also use it on you. They use it on countries like the United States of America. And so they were being troubled by the fact that the U.S. sanctions made it more difficult for them to market the product and to sell it to third countries. So this is in a way a big, big gift, and it enhances their intelligence capabilities considerably. But won't Mossad use this on the White House? Yes. That's the humorous side of this. They now have the capability to tap into the White House and tap into Congress, all their big buddies in Congress, and every of that to make sure everybody's towing the line. Is there any way to repel this? Is there any software that resists it? Well, if it exists, it's top secret. I don't

know of it. I've never heard of it. Someone like Larry Johnson might have a better ear for that kind of thing. Certainly, one would hope that if you're letting this kind of lethal intelligence capability uh into your country you better have some kind of remedy for it but we don't know that well we do know that massad spies on the white house sure and the white house must know that american intel must inform the way. So at least American intel is aware of what Mossad spies on. Yeah, that's right. In fact, there was that spy case a couple of years back where they were wiring all the lamps. Do you remember that? On Capitol Hill.

Right. With transmitters and receivers so they're picking up all the phone conversations and other conversations in secret and this was the Israelis Wow Will Trump be as

subservient to Netanyahu as Biden was and bear in mind Chris you have the picture to Netanyahu as Biden was. And bear in mind, Chris, you have the picture? Seated on the dais of his inauguration was a Mossad asset. Right. Right behind Hillary Clinton.

We'll see her in a minute. There she is, the lady with her hands clasped. You know who that is, don't you? Of course, Miriam Adelson. Correct. Yeah. Correct. The Mossad itself was right there. One person behind Hillary, two people over from Bill, four people over from Biden, five people over from Trump. Trump himself chose the seating arrangements. Are you sure Bill and Hillary weren't part of the Mossad delegation? Who knows? Yeah. Here's the fact. I mean, American politicians in large numbers, as Tom Massey pointed out, have been controlled by the israeli uh the israeli lobby in the united states most of them

have been bought and many of them have even a staff member uh on their staff that essentially is an aipac representative so this is where we're at with Israel and the United States. And if anyone expects it to go anywhere else, that's why Mary Madelson is there to give $100 million to the Trump campaign. This is the reality of life in Washington. And Trump is not going to disrupt this in any way, as long as the cash is flowing. And here's the other thing. Here's the trick about Trump. Trump has a huge ego and he's basically fairly ignorant, really, about what goes on in a lot of these other countries. So he'll put up with a lot of stuff as long as it makes it as those countries make it look like he's the boss, he's the man in control. Yeah, but he claims he wants to be a man of peace. Do you think he's going to allow Netanyahu to drag him into a war with Iran? That's a good question.

I don't have an answer to it. We know that Netanyahu, through his ambassador and others, have been discussing the Trump administration going along with the incentive to go after Iran or to destroy. They phrase it in a way or they bag it in a way, which is that we're going after their nuclear capability, which, of course, Israel already has. Are Israel and Iran preparing for war as we speak? I would say it's inevitable that both assume it's going to come to that at one point or another iran of course now has uh has uh helped its its its own potential defenses by uh coming to an understanding with russia um and uh and also the relationship with china so that's certainly would be a disincentive for israel to to go at or for the United States to go after, go into a conflict that

kind of has those externals attached. So that's what I would think. But yeah, I would assume they are both assuming that there's going to be a war and they're doing what they can to prepare for it. But there's still a lot of imponderables in terms of how it can develop. The United States has no Secretary of Defense, no Director of National Intelligence, and no Director of the CIA, and no Director of the FBI. Are these dangerous times, or are there career people that make decisions in their place? My experience in the government doing

transitions from one presidential administration to another was that the the career people pretty much do take over but bear this in mind that even the career people at the top of the organizations are are very political in terms of their instincts and they're not about to do anything that uh uh the president or the people he eventually brings in are going to disapprove of we haven't heard uh sebastian quirk of threatening vladimir putin in the past month i wonder if he's been silenced yeah that, that's an interesting question. I was just

talking to someone earlier today who had seen an interview with Sebastian Gorka, and they were astonished by the fact that he didn't threaten war against six or seven countries in a matter of two minutes. Wow. Phil, it's always a pleasure. I didn't see Rupert, but it's still a great pleasure to chat with you. Well, thank you. All right, my friend. We'll see you next week.

All the best. Okay, thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. Coming up at four o'clock, rounding out this busy day, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.