Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi (fmr CIA) : What Are US Interests in Israel/Gaza

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

Phil Giraldi (fmr CIA) : What Are US Interests in Israel/GazaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023. It's the day before Thanksgiving. It's a happy, relaxed, not quite a holiday day here in the U.S., but the four-day holiday begins tomorrow. Phil Girardi, thank you for working with us this afternoon on an afternoon in which traditionally and typically most Americans are doing things other than work. But your time and your effort and your insight, of course, is always appreciated. Well, thank you. Did you see or learn of Americans actually celebrating the collective punishment being visited by Prime Minister Netanyahu's government on the Palestinian people at a gathering in Washington, D.C. earlier this week? Well, there have been a number of actual political figures that have made, shall we say, off-the-wall comments about how delighted they would be if all Palestinian children were killed.

And that there's an Israeli government official who has commented that he would like to use a nuclear weapon to make Gaza completely go away and its inhabitants. And this has been echoed by U.S. politicians and some media figures. So there's a lot of this sentiment floating out there that somehow Palestinians are not quite human, and exterminating them is certainly, you know, not a sin, not a crime. If I were to ask Prime Minister Netanyahu if he believed if all men are created equal, how could he possibly answer that? Well, I think if he were honest, but of course, he's not an honest man. He would have to say that he and his religious friends both believe that they are superior by virtue of God having chosen them.

Now, I don't know if he would come out with that kind of line as a politician, but the fact is I think he does, to a certain extent, believe it. And many of the people in his government, like Ben-Gavir, these are people that essentially have come right out and said it and they they believe that the palestinian people are subhuman and worthy of extermination well yeah one of them said they're like animals you know i happen to like animals and i wouldn't even exterminate animals but the uh this is a a perception certainly among uh some people in israel and many of the people here in this country who support what the israelis are doing uh we keep hearing for example that uh we don't need to cease fire because a ceasefire will stop us from uh

wiping out hamas and getting rid of them. So they want to keep killing people. And whereas the sensible thing for most people would say, hey, how about a ceasefire? And let's try to work all this killing out. Was former President Trump's ambassador to Israel involved in these celebrations of slaughter in Washington, D.C.? Yeah, he was parading around on the, this was the march to support Israel that took place, not this recent Tuesday, but the Tuesday before. And David Friedman, the ambassador to Israel under Donald Trump, and he was a Trump lawyer, I believe that was his diplomatic experience. David Friedman spent his entire tour of nearly four years in

Israel defending everything Israel did. The purpose of a U.S. ambassador overseas or a U.S. envoy is basically supposed to be to represent U.S. interests. But here we have the Israelis doing all kinds of mischief that are damaging to U.S. interests and also killing Americans among the many journalists that they've been killing, most particularly in recent times. And nobody in the State Department does anything. The IDF has killed American journalists? Well, yeah. Last year, it killed the woman, Palestinian American woman.

You're right. I forgot that. You're right. You're right. You're right. Yeah. And as I recall, the State Department or the embassy now in Jerusalem, of course, sent a memo over saying, oh, can you tell us more about why this woman who was wearing a bright yellow vest that had press all over it was shot by a sniper and killed? Well, the Israeli response was something to the effect of, well, we're looking into it. Do you think that American troops are prepared to die for Bibi Netanyahu's government?

Well, according to General Clark, he claims they are. I certainly have been a serving army enlisted man, and I certainly would not have wanted to die for Israel or for any other place. And I think this is the kind of nonsense that one hears from politicians. And I'd like to see some of these politicians who are screaming about how much they love Israel, like Lindsey Graham, go over there and put his money on the line. But of course, they never do. This is somebody else's kid who's got to get killed, or a Palestinian kid, or a hundred Palestinian kids who deserve it because they're Palestinian. There is a column out this morning at antiwar.com with a couple different titles, but the most

provocative is Tel Aviv's man in Washington. What is this is about yet another ridiculous personnel feature, shall we say, of the Biden administration. This guy, whose name is Amos Hochstein, and I have to write down what his job is. What does he do? Yeah, he deals directly with the president. He's the special presidential coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security, which is quite interesting because the guy apparently has no background in energy or security or otherwise. Has he been dispatched to Israel to negotiate on behalf of the United States? Yeah, and he has been sent as of this week. I don't know what day he left, but he's in Israel now. And he was sent as a special envoy to negotiate primarily with the Israelis.

And the suggestion was he would be talking to all parties there and he would be discussing the Gaza situation now this is all a bit odd why would you send a energy coordinator who in fact has no as far as we can tell educational or practical background in energy coordination over to talk about what is a crisis situation that should be dealt with through diplomacy. Where was this guy born? What is his background? Yeah, he was born in Israel to American parents who had emigrated to Israel to live there permanently before he was born, but he was born in Israel. And he essentially came over to the United States around about the time of the Obama administration and got into a number of government positions, which he's cultivated since then. So he has dual citizenship. He has Israeli citizenship by virtue of his place of birth,

and he has American citizenship by virtue of the American citizenship of his parents. That's right. He would have had to do some paperwork to get the U.S. citizenship confirmed, but that's essentially how it works. Have you ever heard of a foreign-born diplomat, and I use that term loosely, negotiating for the United States with the country in which he was born? I've never heard of this, but you have a better grasp of these things than I do. Well, there certainly are instances of people who were born in foreign countries who then came to the United States and were naturalized and wound up in government positions, including in State Department. People with foreign languages are very sought after. But no, I have never heard of this kind of level where someone is sent over to negotiate

with a government that's engaged in hostilities and war crimes and genocide at the present time. And you're sending him over there to negotiate about what? I have some ideas on that, actually. Well, I want to hear your ideas, but he fought for the IDF in his youth. Is he Mossad? Is he still an Israeli agent working for the United States government? Then we have a very, very serious criminal issue on our hands. Well, I would say the whole thing is, to put it mildly, very strange. The way you outlined it is absolutely correct. You don't send somebody whose fundamental loyalty

was to another country back to that country to negotiate things that might be your actual interests. And this is a very strange thing. I have a feeling this is more another trick to deliver more concessions, more money, more weapons, more whatever to the Israelis and that they're going to play it that way. Does Joe Biden support wholeheartedly the activities of the IDF in Gaza? Well, he's talking out of both sides of his mouth.

He's saying, on one hand, that Israel is defending itself, which is, of course, nonsense. This has gone way beyond defense. But on the other hand, he's saying, well, we don't want innocent civilians to get killed, but yet he will not support a ceasefire, which would be the only way to maybe achieve both those ends, get the Israelis talking to the Palestinians and getting the Palestinians, give them their lives back and their homes. Could he bring about a ceasefire with a phone call? He could bring about a ceasefire with the Israelis by stopping writing checks for them, stopping the flow of weapons to them.

He could do that probably in a phone call. Netanyahu would probably want to go back and talk to his wife about it. But it would be that kind of thing. And likewise, the Palestinians could be, through the Qataris and others, could be convinced to engage positively in something like this. I want you to listen to a statement from President Putin at the BRICS conference just yesterday, expressing his concerns about the potential expansion and escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We call for joint efforts of the international community aimed at de-escalating the situation, a ceasefire and finding a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And the BRICS states and countries of the region could play a key role in this work.

Is he trying to send a message to Joe Biden? Because in the same comment, we don't happen to have this one on tape, he said there are some unnamed elements that are interested in expanding this war? Yeah, I would think that there are definitely highly placed individuals in the US government who are keenly interested in expanding this. I mean, I would label them as neoconservatives to some extent, since they seem to play a major role in both political parties' foreign policies. But I think it goes beyond that, the military-industrial complex. How else do you explain the bizarre interactions with China that have been taking place at the same time while the u.s is is engaged with these two nonsensical wars that didn't never have to happen in the first place if the u.s had been playing a positive role so you know i think they see a permanent state of war as something that is

beneficial for the american people uh to create i could see where they're creating a sense of threat, by saying we're always under threat from these people, the Chinese, the Russian, the Iranians, we're always under threat, and using this as a kind of a wedge issue to basically bankrupt the country on behalf of certain interests. Here's President Xi. You mentioned China. Here's President Xi yesterday strongly supporting. This is very interesting, Phil. An authoritative, listen to the word.

I'm going to have to read the translation because it's only in subtitles. An authoritative group. I don't know who he means. An authoritative international organization to compel a two-state solution. The president of China. The root cause of the

Palestinian-Israeli situation is the fact that the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, their right to existence, and their right of return have long been ignored. I have emphasized on many occasions that the only viable way to break the cycle of Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies in the two-state solution, in the restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine and the establishment of an independent state of Palestine. There can be no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just recognition of Palestine. China calls for early convening of an international peace conference,

an international peace conference that is more authoritative to build international consensus for peace and work toward an early solution to the question of Palestine. First of all, what does he mean by the right of return, Phil? Well, he's referring to the 800,000 Palestinians who were driven from their homes by the Israeli militias when the State of Israel was created. These people have been living in refugee camps in various neighboring countries for the past 75 years in many cases. So that's what he's referring to, that the Palestinians who were driven from their homes, their homes were taken from them and given to Jewish settlers who had come from Europe or the United States. And he's saying that they have a right to their property, a right to their homes,

and this has to be rectified. Wow. I guess this is not going to happen while Netanyahu's colleagues are in power. How significant is it that the president of China is now weighing in at a very delicate time while negotiations for hostages are going on and while Palestinians are being slaughtered and saying it's time for the violence to stop and it's time for a two-state solution, which Palestine is a free and independent and sovereign country. Yeah, that's the key to it. Since the creation of the State of Israel, the Palestinians have never been really sovereign. They haven't had a sovereign state or territory that they could call their own.

This is largely due to the fact that Israel obviously has a huge advantage in military power in uh access to uh uh markets it's uh its relationships with certain european countries which are well established and the united states it's it all all the the cards have been on the side of israel and it's never been recognized or it has been recognized but it's never actually been there's never been an attempt made to give sovereignty to the Palestinians and to return insofar as possible the properties that were taken from them and make compensation for that. How do you see this ending? I mean, at some point the war will end, whether it's a forced ending imposed upon the Netanyahu government by outside military forces, or whether they just give up the ghost, or whether they wipe Gaza from the planet. But at some point the war will end and Netanyahu will have to answer for what happened on October 7. How do you see this ending, Phil?

Well, I must admit, I wish I had a crystal ball and were able to say this is what the gods are deciding for us. I just don't know it it uh it depends a lot on what kind of decisions are made i think over the next couple weeks as we see this uh this this kind of program of of possibly uh you know creating a pause maybe followed by another pause as hostages are released, see how that works. And that might create a different atmosphere. I think Netanyahu is an awful human being, but he's not completely stupid. And he realizes that the world is swinging very strongly against his country due to the outrages they've been committing in Gaza. He knows that,

and he understands that. And I think he even understands that in the U.S., the support for Israel is wobbling. It's there for the. Has the Israeli, or is the Israeli public ready to be rid of him once the war is over? Yeah, I think they were almost, they weren't ready to get rid of him before the war started. And that's why there's a certain amount of suspicion that the war might have been started to take the heat off. So, yeah, he's not popular, let's put it that way. I mean, the Israeli economy is in shambles.

They lost 350,000 young professionals who are reservists now in the military. They don't have any of the Palestinian laborers that their factories and plants used to have those people can't leave gaza many of them are dead um according to the economist magazine a piece coming out this weekend uh the hamas finances are in better shape than the israeli finances an interesting thought um yeah i you know i you're absolutely right i mean and to put on top of that they've evacuated all the villages along the lebanese border these people are are in tourist hotels now the tourist economy is taking a hit which is a big one for israel uh you know there's, there are a lot of wrinkles to this story. But it's funny how you

come back to the whole question of how our friend Hochstein has wound up in the middle of it. Well, maybe we'll find out. Maybe we won't. Where's the CIA in all of this? Is the CIA present in Israel now? Are they telling Joe Biden what Netanyahu's going to do before he does it? Are they physically present in Gaza? Do they know where Hamas is? And are they reporting it to the IDF? What is the CIA doing now in this Israeli-Hamas war? Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't honestly know what their capabilities are but i would imagine uh they kind of veer on the side of a a lot of technical stuff where they're collecting phone calls and the military would be in this too and even the state department and nsa everybody would be doing

this that's how they're finding out what's going on uh now the director of director of CIA has been there numerous times. It's clear he's a decision maker in the Biden cabinet, and he's doing whatever negotiation on a diplomatic side is possible to do. He's an ex-diplomat, as a matter of fact. So he does know what he's doing. So I think that's the way it's playing out now. We should know a lot more maybe in a few days. Phil Giraldi, always a pleasure, my dear friend, no matter how unpleasant these topics are. A happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. Thank you for coming on on this Friday,

and this feels like a Friday, on this Wednesday in America when most people are not working, but you and I are, and the viewers are deeply appreciative, as am I. Thank you, Phil. Thank you. So, my friends, we're very close to 240,000 subscriptions by Thanksgiving, which is tomorrow. We're about 1,000, 1,200 short of it. I think we'll reach it. I'm sure with your help, we'll reach the 250,000 by Christmas. Four o'clock today, John Mearsheimer. How bad have things gotten? How poorly has Prime

Minister Netanyahu overplayed his hand? Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.