Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi: Israelis Suppressing Christianity.

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Phil Giraldi: Israelis Suppressing Christianity.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025. Phil Girardi joins us now. Phil, a pleasure, my dear friend. I've been captivated by your piece on the Israeli suppression of Christianity. Christianity being suppressed in the place of its birth, the place where Jesus Christ was born. Before we get there, does the death of Pope Francis have any meaning in Israel? Now put that question to Max Blumenthal and I thought he's gonna say, I'm not really judge, Pope is Catholic, the Israelis are Jewish, it turns out it does have some meaning but I'll tell you what he said after you can address this question if you choose to. Well, yeah, sure.

I mean, he's an international figure. He generally is renowned for his humanitarianism, which has had a major impact on the Catholic Church. He definitely has an impact which is becoming clearer. You may recall that back about three months ago I wrote an article saying I would love to see the Pope personally go of Gaza and call functioning Catholic Church in Gaza, the Holy Catholic Church. And he's doing this every day. So the man deserves a lot of respect. And I'd like to see this story get out a lot more widely.

And I'd like to see the Catholic Church in the United States take a position. I wish that Francis had sent Cardinal Perlin, the Secretary of State of the Vatican, directly to Tel Aviv and in front of a television camera, stood in front of Netanyahu with his arms out saying, stop, stop the slaughter. Didn't happen. However, when Francis died, the Israeli embassy in Rome posted condolences. Netanyahu's government ordered them removed. This is what Max informed us of, but I didn't know about that at all, whether it's because of people that the Pope was involved with in his youth before he was a priest in Argentina in the 40s and 50s, or whether it was because he kept calling every day, as you pointed out, the one remaining Catholic priest and Catholic parish in Gaza. The church was built in the ninth century

and it's still there. It's one of the oldest structures in Gaza. Mike Huckabee, whom I have known for many years, is the US ambassador to Israel. I'm gonna play you a clip now, which will turn your stomach, in which he justifies the use of starvation as a weapon against the Gazans.

Chris. Hello, I'm Mike Huckabee, U.S. Ambassador to Israel. This past weekend, Dr. Hanan Balki, who is the regional coordinator for the WHO for the Eastern Mediterranean region, called upon me to put more pressure on Israel to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. I appreciate the message from Dr. Balkhi.

And today, what I would like to suggest is that we work together on putting the pressure where it really belongs on Hamas to give us the opportunity to open up those humanitarian channels so we call upon Hamas to sign an agreement so that humanitarian aid can flow into Gaza to the people who desperately need it. When that happens and hostages are released which is an urgent matter for all of us then we hope that that humanitarian aid will flow and flow freely knowing that it will be done without Hamas being able to confiscate and abuse their own people by not allowing those resources to get to the people who desperately need it. They definitely no humanitarian aid until the hostages are released.

And we know that Netanyahu will never enter into an agreement to release the hostages because their condition is that the war ends and he's never going to end the war. You have a Christian preacher who became the governor of Arkansas and then a national figure at Fox News and then ran for president and then bounced around from network to network, including Newsmax, now the U.S. Now the US ambassador to Israel justifying starvation of innocence as a weapon of war. That's a war crime, Mike. Yeah, plus he's a liar. The reason why the situation is what it is in Gaza, Israel, is because Israel broke the ceasefire, the truce agreement that the US

had brokered and it went back on an armed footing and recommenced attacks on the civilians in Gaza. And it's not Hamas that's preventing the food from coming in and the medical supplies or letting the hostages out. The hostages would have been released already in terms of the agreement that was reached that Israel broke. So he's a frigging liar. He's one of these Christian Zionist hypocrites that twist everything to make it look like Israel is a

perpetual victim and Israel is the only source for good in the Middle East. Israel is a war criminal and its leadership consists of people who should be put up in front of a wall and shot. These are the most evil people in the world right now, and what they are doing is shameless. And it's shameless that the U.S. government is not taking a strong position against all of this. Why hasn't Donald Trump said something about the death of the Pope and tied that into the Pope's efforts to bring peace to the world, which Trump claims he's interested in. Well, that's BS.

Well, if Trump was interested in peace, he'd make two phone calls, one to Zelensky and one to Netanyahu and say, that's it. It's Christianity in the Middle East dying. Yeah, I think the clearest way to or the simplest way to see it is through the numbers. Basically, if you go back to 1948, when Israel was created and the turmoil started in the Middle

East, a new type of turmoil started in the Middle East, Syria had a large Christian population. It had a large Christian population fairly recently when the United States and Israel, everyone else, went after them. And Lebanon, of course, was more than half Christian. And the president of Lebanon is still under their constitution a Christian, but the Christians are fleeing the country again because they're getting, they were invaded by Israel in the 80s and they're being invaded again, Israel with their land stolen again now. So this is going on.

And the Palestinians, there was a large chunk of Palestinian population that was Christian. And many of these people have sought to flee and have gone to other countries where in many cases they had family. And the numbers are greatly diminished. And the Christians themselves are being constantly punished by the Netanyahu government, which restricts what they can do, when they can go to church, what kind of Christian celebrations they can do, when they can go to church, what kind of celebration, Christian celebrations they can exercise, and it goes on and on and on.

Is it true that Catholics need a permit to engage in any religious activity outside of the physical confines of a church and the Netanyahu regime limits the number of permits that it'll give out? Yeah, the number of permits this last year for both Easter and Christmas were reduced to the range of about 5,000. Previously, the numbers have been about 50,000. And the Christians in Palestine were able to celebrate in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,

able to celebrate in the Church of Bethlehem, able to do these things. And the interesting thing is it's Netanyahu, an arbitrary decision, that he doesn't want any of these people in Jerusalem anymore or in Bethlehem. the people of the city of Yahu, an arbitrary decision that he doesn't want any of these people in Jerusalem anymore or in Bethlehem. And the Zionist mayor of Jerusalem in fact has said we want the numbers reduced to the point where the only religious activities that these people could do is inside a church. They don't want them in the streets.

They don't want them celebrating. They don't want them doing anything. What would be their reason for wanting to suppress Christians in general and Catholics in particular? They pose no threat whatsoever to the Netanyahu government. There's no threat that I can analyze. Well, it's not a question of threat. There has never been in all the years

of Christians in Palestine going to the major churches and celebrating the major religious feasts in the Christian religion. And never been a problem. There's never been an incident. There's never been an incident. There's never been any unrest. There's never been any politicizing of it. This is all in Netanyahu's head.

This has all basically been cranked up since 2022, which is the most recent administration and the most extremist with people like Smotrich in the government, calling for all non-Jews basically to be removed from what they define now as the Jewish state. And this is basically what's been going on. There's no threat from the Christian religion. And in fact, I would characterize it as negative no threat. The United States, for example, which claims to have a large Christian population

traditionally has never said anything to rebuke the Israelis for what they've been doing. And so this goes on and on and on. And it's a plan to basically get rid of all the Palestinians of which a considerable portion have been of the Christian faith. And the United States and the formerly great Catholic countries of Europe have done nothing. Yeah, they've done something. They've made it illegal for me and you and lots of people in those countries you're talking about to say anything bad or critical about the state of Israel or about the Jewish groups in the Israeli lobby, there's an Israeli lobby all over the place, I would remind people, not just in

the US, to basically act corruptly to create their own policies that benefit themselves in all these places. And nobody's pushing back on that. They're afraid to push against the Israel lobby in all these places. Is there freedom of religion and freedom of speech in Israel? I mean, could could you or I stand on a street corner in Jerusalem and recite ostentatiously with the beads in our hands, recite the rosary? No, you would be the general tactic is to spit on obvious Christians. This is engaged in all the time.

There's also going into a church if you're able to do that and urinating over the altar. That's another trick. There's vandalism of Christian churches and sites and historic places. That all takes place. This is all being done with the Israeli police and Israeli army standing by and watching it. Most of this is done by settlers, and most of these settlers are former American citizens. What happened when the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz sent an Israeli, Israeli Jew journalist dressed as a Catholic priest through the streets of

old Jerusalem. Yeah, he got spat all over about, I think, eight times within 10 minutes. And some of those spitting on him were soldiers and young children. Israeli soldiers. Yeah, Israeli soldiers, of course. And he was basically yelled at and screamed at. And interestingly enough, there was another episode of something like that, in which a bunch of American tourists who were visiting the holy sites, holy Christian sites in Jerusalem were attacked by Israeli settlers and other bystanders.

And the attackers did not realize these people were Christian Zionists who were there on a learning trip. And boy, they learned. But I wonder if the message got through to them. Christian Zionists there to support the policies of the Netanyahu government in Israel and they got spat on because they were Christians. What's with these settlers? They get their lawless? Well the settlers are are particularly vicious form of Anti-christian

Guys from Brooklyn This has been known for a long time as long as I've been aware of what's been going on in Israel The people I would talk to would always tell me about the guys from Brooklyn a lot of these You know, of course that parts of Brooklyn and Bronx and the Bronx are the biggest concentrations of Orthodox Jews in the United States. And many of these people have wound up in Israel as settlers in foundations that are paid for, in settlements that are paid for, largely with US taxable contributions which never get taxed.

The son-in-law of our current President of the United States is involved with just one of those foundations, the Consular Foundation, which has been paying for these settlers to go over there and take Palestinian land and set up their own settlements. Let me switch gears a little bit because of your experience in the military, Phil. What is your take on the controversy surrounding Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth? Well I think that basically it shows a lack of what one might just call common sense. His understanding of the importance of the position that he is in, his understanding of classified information and why it is classified and the damage it can cause if it is released in terms of American soldiers and American diplomats getting killed.

He doesn't seem to understand that. The fact that he's made his mistake twice is quite bizarre. And I gather that they're looking around for a replacement right now, but I'm not sure how serious. How serious? Here's our friend and colleague ambassador, Charles Freeman, being just a little less charitable than you on the same subject, cut number 18, correct? Well, I have to say he was more successful as a talking head with greasy hair than he is as secretary of defense. And the fact is that sharing this kind of information with your

wife and others on a signal call, they have no need to know this information. It puts it in jeopardy. It risks the lives of those carrying out a military operation. This is the behavior of a small boy, posting to people he cares about. Colonel McGregor says when you appoint a clown, you end up with a circus. These guys are very unhappy with all this. And these are guys that could have that job. Absolutely. And these are guys that could have that job. Oh, absolutely. Totally qualified for the job and would never be confirmed because the donor class, well, the donor class has beaten up on both of them. Trump wanted to make Colonel McGregor, U S ambassador to Germany and, uh,

Dennis Blair, General Blair, who I believe, if I have my history correct, who was the head of the CIA in the Carter administration, wanted to give Ambassador Freeman a significant position. I don't know if it was Carter or Clinton, whatever it was, that got bounced also. Yeah, well, you know, the people at the top of the government don't like truth speakers. Well, we both know that. Phil, it's a pleasure chatting with you, no matter what you say. at the top of the government don't like truth speakers. Well, we both we both know that. Phil, it's a pleasure chatting with you, no matter what we're talking about. I did not know of the level of repression that exists in Israel.

If anybody wants to read this in detail, Phil's article is at the UNS review, UNZ Review, and it's called the Suppression of Christianity in its Birthplace. Let me, can I just add one more comment that's in the article? Sure. Back in 2023, the Christian groups active in Jerusalem got alarmed to such an extent about what was happening and the physical assaults on them and so on and so forth that they convened. They had a meeting and they talked about what they might be able to do or might not do given the fact that the

Israeli government was not exactly being helpful. And it was notable that the Israeli government did not send a representative to this meeting to talk with them, nor did the United States Embassy. Incredible. Well, I don't know how this ends, Phil, but it's not a pretty picture right now. Thank you for pointing it out to us. Enjoy the day and the upcoming weekend. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you very much. Of course.

Coming up tomorrow, Thursday at one o'clock on the afternoon, Professor Glenn Deason at two in the afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor at three in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC