Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi: Netanyahu and US Freedom of Speech.

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Phil Giraldi: Netanyahu and US Freedom of Speech.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, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024. Our dear friend and dear friend of the show, Phil Giraldi, joins us now. Phil, a belated Merry Christmasil a belated merry christmas a belated happy new year a much overdue thank you uh for all the time and insight you've given us in 2023 and a hope and aspiration we can continue to count on letting me pick your big brain uh in 2024 well thank you thank you very much and to all our viewers, I would say, you know, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. We really count on you. Yes. Thank you, Phil. So you have a very

interesting piece coming out over the weekend, which by Saturday or Sunday will be at judsnap.com, but they can get it earlier at the places where you normally post it, making a very interesting argument about the interconnection between the freedom of speech and to a certain extent, the freedom of assembly and association here in the U.S. and the Israel lobby and support of Israel. So big picture, is the United States government helping Israel by suppressing free speech here at home? Well, again, big picture is right. I would say that it absolutely is. All of the activity that we've been seeing ever since October 7th, when the Hamas situation developed, basically is being, I would say, distorted in a way to protect Israel by limiting the ability of critics here in the United States and elsewhere to make the arguments that are necessary to make about what's going on.

It's not a question of anyone going out and saying we want to destroy Israel because it's not, but they're twisting the narrative they're twisting the words that are being used to give that impression when in fact it's been uh the palestinians who have been on the receiving end of all the violence and all the suppression and all the lack of democracy and freedom and uh they are the being the they are the real victims. And the whole narrative is being twisted the other way. And the only way to do that is basically to distort and twist what we Americans used to believe was freedom of speech. Now we're being told that any criticism of Israel, for example, is anti is antisemitism and is a hate crime.

But that's nonsense. Israel is a state. It's a government. It's a political philosophy. Zionism is. And these two things have nothing to do with each other. Nobody's going out and saying we must kill Jews. Or someone is. But this is no one serious or no one we we must kill Jews or someone is.

But this is no one serious or no one we should be listening to or are listening to. But the idea of the United States aid to Israel is ultimately a political judgment made by the Congress. And political speech is the highest protected speech there is. The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government out of the business of speech totally, but especially with respect to political speech. Does the Israeli lobby and do their allies in local, state, and federal government think that some beneficial purpose is served by stifling free speech. Well, they're being very selective in how they see free speech, in a sense, being abused. The meetings that Congress had a month ago with the three heads of major universities in the United States. Basically, those meetings were an attempt to get the three women involved to commit themselves to basically ban speech that was critical of what

Israel was doing in Gaza. And this is perfectly legitimate as far as i'm concerned and they tried to explain that there are there are nuances or there's context in terms of of free speech and not free speech when people are using speech and language to threaten others or to create situations situations of violence uh and violence against others or other groups, this is where the line is being crossed. But this is not the case of what's going on right now on campuses, where people are debating one side against the other about whether the Israeli reaction to Gaza and to Hamas is legitimate or whether it's a genocide. And I think this is a legitimate debate.

But what business is it of the government? What legitimate authority under the Constitution does the federal government have inquiring about how Harvard University is governed. Yeah, that's a point too. The fact is that if there are not crimes being committed, then the federal government or the state government, local government, they have no right to intervene into these kinds of discussions. And yet here was Congress calling in the presidents of three major universities to basically try to make them say that this is all hatred of Jews and this is all a manifestation of hate speech, which by some interpretations is criminal. So they're trying to criminalize what is essentially a political discussion about what people in foreign countries are doing. So the whole thing is absurd in terms of how Congress and how the White House see that they have a role to play in this. So of the three university professors summoned before the House of Representatives,

where Congresswoman Elsie Stefanik revealed her utter ignorance of the concept of free speech, nevertheless, she browbeat the daylots out of all three. Two are gone. President of the University of Pennsylvania and the president of Harvard resigned because of the brouhaha that began in that interrogation, an interrogation that, in my view, Congress had no business making whatsoever. But big picture demonstrates, I think, and correct me if you think I'm wrong or support me if you think I'm right, Phil, that the Israeli lobby in America doesn't care about free speech unless it supports Israel. Phil.

Yeah, okay. I thought there was a picture coming. Yeah, absolutely. That's what they take. If you look at the Anti-Defamation League, you look at AIPAC, you look at the press statements they put out, they see Israel as a victim, where most of the rest of the world sees it quite the other way in terms of what's been happening to the palestinians since 1940 uh 48 and uh you know this is uh this is debatable this is this is a political issue it has moral overtones uh if you're if you're killing people there are going to be moral overtones and uh there will be uh one way to look at an issue and another way to look at an issue. And let's have, instead of Congress coming in to force a viewpoint, which is essentially

why these women were being harassed, let's have a little common sense. Let's have a little bit of listing on two sides. I don't think anybody I know actually approves of killing 7,000 civilians, and you're right, of that 19, 7,000 were babies. Chris, you can put the picture back up again for a minute. The lady closest to us is the former president of Harvard. She resigned yesterday. The lady in the middle is the former president of the University of Pennsylvania. She resigned before Christmas. The lady on the far side was and remains the president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It's funny because the University of Penn president hired a very expensive PR firm and a very expensive law firm to prep her for her testimony. Is that money poorly spent?

If she had come to me, I would have advised, give them your name and your address and then take the Fifth Amendment. Don't get in an argument with these people. They set the ground rules. They control the forum. They're not judges. They're political hacks that are going to try to embarrass you. You can't be prosecuted for silence.

Is the ADL and AIPAC demanding that more heads roll? Excuse me, commanding the what? Demanding that more heads roll in academia. Oh, yeah. Well, yes, they are. I mean, there's basically been a lot of attempts made to define a lot of these issues in a way that it excludes certain kinds of discussion. And we've been seeing a lot of this also tied in with the politics of universities, you know, whether they're too liberal, whether they're too right wing, all of this is getting wrapped together in various combinations to restore what various politicized groups are seeing as an essential remake of higher education. So do you think that universities are willing to squelch free speech in deference to the wishes of their biggest donors? I mean, some of these universities, Harvard's located in Massachusetts,

Columbia is located in New York, Princeton is located in New Jersey. These are states that have public accommodations laws, which require, even though it's private property, require these universities to protect free speech. They can't punish the speech that their donors hate. But it appears that that's what these lobbyists are trying to achieve. And that's what this Congresswoman and her colleague on the committee has been trying to achieve and did achieve with the president of Harvard and the president of Penn. Well, the major donors began pulling money out of both Columbia and Harvard almost immediately after the hearings in Washington. And that was certainly a motivating factor for the president of University of Pennsylvania, McCaul, to resign again almost immediately. She saw what was coming and realized this was a no-win situation. Catherine Gay of Harvard stuck it out a bit longer and had considerable support from faculty and students, but major donors, again, were threatening to the billions of dollars to punish the university for creating a hostile atmosphere

for Jewish students. So again, this is the issue. We're talking about Jewish students being singled out as the victims of Palestinian students. How powerful are Palestinians and Palestinian groups in the United States? They're all being banned by the universities, and Palestinian students, how powerful are Palestinians and Palestinian groups in the United States? They're all being banned by the universities, and Palestinian students are the ones that are being focused on as the troublemakers. So this is incredible. I mean, here you have the 30,000 dead are Palestinians, and yet somehow it's Jewish students on campus and the Israeli government that are the victims. I think this is going to backfire, Phil. I can't believe that in the minds of Israel's American allies, the support for the Netanyahu government is so strong that it's willing to use moral suasion, economic opportunity, and even the power of the government, like with Elsie

Stefanik, Chris just showed up. There she is, the chief interrogator of this inquisition, to stifle and to condemn free speech. I can't believe that that will last or will survive. The value, the principal value judgment underlying the country is the right to think as you wish and say what you think and publish what you say. Well, let's put it this way. I think that the question becomes how you shape the narrative. And this is what people are afraid of. We have a whole series of actions undertaken by the Israel lobby over the course of 50 years 60 years that we can look back on showing us just how they get rid of politicians that are are giving them trouble like fulbright like percy uh they're a whole bunch of them uh suddenly they're confronted

with a candidate with uh you know 50 million million in his pocket to run a campaign. And they're gotten rid of. So this has been happening. And this is what these women in the university presidents, they realize this is an unrelenting foe that will keep going after you and keep going after you and keep going after you until you surrender completely. And sometimes if you surrender, they still get rid of you. This is the way the game is played by the Israel lobby. And, you know, I could go on for an hour explaining the many cover-ups they've done, the many things they've done. USS Liberty, huh? You know, how many times does it have to happen that Americans are killed and American interests are sacrificed for Israel,

which doesn't even basically have anything to do with U.S. national security? It's all quite the other way. One of our writers who uses a nom de plume called Gotham Parks and a bunch of Roman numerals refers to Mrs. Stefanik as HUAC 2023. HUAC is House Un-American Activities Committee. And that's true. This is what happened in the 50s when there was the House on Americans Activities Committee, and they investigated what was essentially free speech, which they called un-American. I'm sorry to say that a young congressman from California was a member of that committee by the name of Richard M. Nixon. Nevertheless, it's a dark spot in American history when the government can summon you before it, put you under oath, and demand that you justify and explain your political opinions.

How can it possibly offend the First Amendment to condemn genocide? Yeah, well, you think it's a no-brainer because the U.S. is a signatory to the International Genocide Convention. And the UN Charter, which the U.S. is a signatory to, also very specifically talks about these sorts of incidents where one government, one country goes after another and carries out ethnic cleansing. It's considered to be one of the worst anti-humanitarian crimes in existence. And yet the United States is sitting on its hands. And Joe Biden today said he's going to keep the weapons flow to Israel going. We're not under any circumstances using the only leverage we have against them, incidentally, cutting back on the weapons that we keep giving them. And we're even

doing it, in a sense, illegally, internally, and that Biden is doing this without congressional review, which, of course, would be a no-brainer. would happen automatically but the fact is he's uh he's making up his own rules as he goes along so over the weekend over the the new year's eve weekend secretary blinken signed a document under oath swearing uh that it was necessary to send 147.5 million in military equipment to israel and Congress because, A, it was an emergency, and, B, it was demanded by the national security interests of the United States. I would defy him. I actually wouldn't defy him. I would love him to let me interrogate him under oath as if it were in my courtroom,

because this is an act of perjury, that how this could possibly be, A, an emergency, B, to service the national security interests of the United States, Phil. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, if you put together all the lies and all the narrative shifting that's been going on specifically since October 7th. But before that, you know, we're Ukraine, we had the same business, didn't we? And the fact is that this stuff is just utter nonsense. It's being shoved down the throats of the public who have no say in what goes on. And those weapons are not neutral.

They're going over there to kill people, and they're doing that very successfully. And that makes us complicit in what is going on and in killing those people. I, as an American, I reject that. And I would like to debate my congresswoman, to whom I've sent a number of letters and never had a response. You know, what is going on here? What's happened to our country? Well, what's happened to our country is that the government picks and chooses sides and spends money however it wants. It's all about staying in power and about transferring wealth. I mean, there is just no arguable basis to say that giving this money to Israel is A, an emergency, and B, necessary for the national security.

It's also crazy to bypass Congress in this case, because Congress would give this money in a heartbeat, because Congress is in lockstep with Joe Biden on this issue of aid to Israel. I can see them bypassing Congress on Ukraine. I think it's wrong, but I can see them doing it because they're not going to get the money out of the Republican-controlled House, but they're certainly going to get whatever they want out of both houses of Congress for Israel. So why lie under oath? Why invoke emergency powers? Why claim this is a matter of American national security interests when it's not necessary to do so? Yeah, well, that's exactly the scary bit about this. If you ever had the opportunity of cornering one of these people and asking, well, what is in it for the United States? What is in it for the American people? You're fighting these two wars by proxy, costing us hundreds of billions of dollars. Where is the gain for the people that elected you. Are you blind to that? I just, you know, at a certain point, the incredulity that you get out of watching our federal government at work is just, you know, it's mind-boggling. Paul Jay

What we were just looking at, Chris, you can put it up again if you want, is the AIPAC website that actually shows members of Congress who've manifested a public allegiance to AIPAC website that actually shows members of Congress who manifested a public allegiance to AIPAC, and you can donate to those members of Congress right through the AIPAC website. There are hundreds of members of Congress there in both houses and in both political parties. Some of them are friends of mine, and I didn't know that they were involved in this, and I will confront them. One of them, I won't mention his name, comes on this show regularly, and I will confront him over this. We'll see where it goes. Phil, it's always great chatting with you no matter what we're talking about. You have the courage of a tiger and a fierce intellect, and so much appreciate all the time you spent with us.

Well, thank you very much for having me on. Sure, sure. Again, Happy New Year to you and your family. And we'll see you again next week. Okay, thank you. See you then. Thank you. Coming up in 35 minutes at 4 o'clock Eastern, the inimitable Max Blumenthal.

Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.