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Sept. 24, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
27:05
Phil Giraldi : Israel Keeps on Killing
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, September 25th, 2024.
Phil Giraldi will be here with us in just a moment on why and how Israeli forces just keep killing.
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Phil Giraldi, welcome here, my dear friend.
Always a pleasure to chat with you no matter what we're discussing, although these subject matters are particularly odious these days.
I know you saw the interview that I just finished with Colonel McGregor.
It's hard to figure out which is the worst conflagration for America, Israel, Gaza, or Ukraine, Russia.
We'll get to your views on that.
But let's start with what you have just published.
I mean, the top is that this is a war crime.
It's clearly been defined as a war crime.
To use booby-trapped weapons to kill indiscriminately is a war crime.
It's not quite at the genocide level that Israel's already practicing with the Gazans, but it's the same sort of thing.
It's a complete disregard of norms.
And there are norms for warfare and what we call just war and decent conduct of wars when they take place.
And the Israelis are basically setting their own We're out to basically destroy all of the Palestinians.
That's clearly the plan right now.
It's going on on the West Bank.
It's going on in Gaza.
And now they're moving on Lebanon.
Today, they were reportedly saying in the Knesset that they need this kind of safe space between Israel and the Lebanese.
So they're going to be carving out a zone between the two countries that presumably will extend up to the Latani River.
So that's something we can look forward to.
And the bombings and everything that are taking place, which are killing Hundreds of Lebanese.
And these are war crimes, too.
The two countries are not at war.
And, you know, this will continue.
Every day, the U.S. media is not reporting it much.
But the fact is that hundreds of people are dying.
And they're dying in a product of war crimes and genocide.
The Israelis always wanting to control or at least influence the narrative.
Had their friends in the media in the West say that 50 or 60 Hezbollah soldiers were killed and 3,000 were injured.
Didn't it turn out that the vast majority, like 90 to 95% of the people that were killed and injured, were civilians?
They may have been civilian employees of the government.
But they were civilians.
They were not soldiers.
Yeah.
Hezbollah in Lebanon has a political role.
And they provide social services of many kinds to the people in southern Lebanon.
And this has been going on since forever.
And so the fact is that the number of these pagers, as reported in the media, has varied between 3,000 and 5,000, is what I've seen.
And these have been widely distributed among people who, for various reasons, have contact with the Hezbollah bureaucracy.
Do we know the circuitous route that the, I think you wrote about this, that the pagers took?
I mean, how they got into the hands of Hezbollah using various disguises and deceptions to do so?
Yeah, there are a number of theories that are being floated, because obviously the Israelis have not come clean on what exactly they did and how they did it, because I guess they presume they're going to do it again.
But the licensing for the pagers came from a company in Taiwan.
But that was all it was.
It was licensing whoever paid for it.
And according to the...
And their checks were always a little bit funny, would come on a circuitous path to get to them, and that sort of thing.
But anyway, the authority to create these pagers, to put them together, went to a company in Budapest, Hungary.
Now this company is also a bit shaky.
In its origins and what it is up to, some have claimed it's a shell company that was set up by the Israelis specifically to run this operation.
And the Hungarian government is claiming that these pagers were not, in fact, produced in Hungary.
So my assumption, and that of several other people who have looked into the matter, is that these pagers were actually produced in Israel.
Maybe moved up to Budapest and then somehow a contract was entered into with Hezbollah or with Lebanese authorities.
And that's where these pages were sold.
And these 5,000 pages were intended to be the first phase in an invasion of Lebanon.
But somehow the word that these pages were a bit dodgy seems to be getting out.
And the Israelis decided to move and detonate them early, even though they weren't ready to invade.
So that's the way the story seems to be falling together.
So it's definitely an Israeli hand, an Israeli deception operation.
You have to give them credit for being very clever.
But that's all.
Because this is horrific.
They killed a lot of innocent people and indicated that this is something that will be in our future.
Next time you fly an airplane, maybe your electronics will not be allowed on the plane with you.
This sort of thing.
Now, these were not ordinary pagers.
It was not the batteries in the pagers that exploded.
There was explosive material deliberately.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Phil.
My understanding is that somebody deliberately introduced explosive materials into the interior of the pagers.
Yeah, that's absolutely correct.
Everyone agrees on that.
There's disagreement in terms of what exactly the detonator was.
There is, in fact, some of the people who have examined the issue.
We suspect that something was actually added to the battery and added to the electronics to overheat the battery and cause the battery to explode and detonate the explosive.
And the explosive, of course, is what caused the serious damage.
An exploding battery would not have been that big a deal.
But the explosive is what killed the people and tore them apart.
We're looking at this like I am now, right in front of their face when it exploded.
Yeah, that's right.
And that's precisely what happened.
Here are these people, completely innocent, had one of these pagers that they had been using, and all of a sudden the pager started acting funny.
What would you do?
You would look at it, right?
Or something like that.
And this is why a lot of people like myself and I'm sure people like Colonel McGregor would recognize that we're kind of entering into a strange new world by this Israeli action where you are using electronics and using bogus electronics that can explode by a signal that's sent to them.
And these can be used anonymously, and they can be used in any fashion that you see fit.
And this is quite scary when you think about the ramifications of this, where people are going to be in security jobs for public transportation and things like that, and in public spaces, are going to be very aware of this possibility.
And this is something that might well become Shall we say the horror of the future unleashed on us by the Israelis.
Does the Israeli government, Phil, have a history of killing civilians in countries with which it is not lawfully at war?
The Israeli government virtually always kills civilians and soldiers and others from countries where it's not at war.
I mean, it's the...
There's the case of the USS Liberty, a U.S. surveillance ship that was present at the Six-Day War in 1967, which the Israelis staged somewhat of a false flag attack on.
It killed 34 American sailors and wounded 172 more in an attempt to sink the ship that was aided and abetted by our president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who had sold out to the Israelis.
And so, you know, this is the kind of stuff that happens.
The Israelis have been targeting journalists in Gaza.
They've been shooting aid workers.
And this is all deliberate.
Hospital workers, they've kidnapped doctors from hospitals in Gaza and tortured them.
This is incredible what's going on.
They get away with it, and they only get away with it because the United States is providing cover and providing them with weapons and providing them with money, no matter what they do.
And when their monster of a prime minister showed up here, he got 54 standing ovations from our Congress.
What can I say?
Yeah.
Why did the Israelis perpetrate this attack?
Was it to have been part of a massive invasion and somebody jumped the gun and they decided we better use it now since they found out about it?
Yeah, one of the stories says that the United States had prior knowledge of this, that the American...
So there is a little bit something of a backstory going on here.
And there seems to be agreement that the idea was to detonate these pagers just before the Israeli army was about to move in.
We're talking about the infantry and tanks and that sort of thing, move in on Lebanon to invade them.
And the idea was that their communications would be so disrupted that they would be able to respond effectively to the Israelis and they would get massacred.
So that was the idea.
When the word apparently leaked out or there was some concern about it leaking out, they decided to move ahead and kill these people anyway.
But is the intentional killings of civilians, well, we know it's not lawful.
Is it even militarily indicated?
Is there any way that this would actually have advanced the Israeli invasion, even if it had happened at the time that the Israelis originally planned for it to happen?
Well, militarily indicated it would depend on how many of the people...
We don't know the answer to that.
I don't think the Israelis know the answer to that either.
So this was just a, I hate to describe it as a gimmick, but as a tool, in this case a tool which would not have been anticipated by Hezbollah necessarily.
And it was that kind of thing.
And it was expected to be a component.
In what they would see as a successful invasion of South Lebanon.
Would Israel have any regrets that children were slaughtered and blinded?
Are you kidding me?
If they had any regrets, they'd have regrets about all the hundreds, the thousands of children they've killed in Gaza.
No, they have no regrets at all.
And public opinion in Israel is very strongly supportive to killing all these snakes.
As they refer to as the babies born of Palestinian women.
Here's the strongest condemnation that I've heard.
It's not from an American official, but a retired American official, Leon Panetta, whom I know and had many encounters with when I was at Fox, who was the director of the CIA at one point and also was the secretary of defense.
He's very strong in what he says, Phil.
Cut number 13. I feel lucky to be able to place an explosive in technology that is very prevalent these days and turn it into a war of terror.
Really, a war of terror.
This is something new.
Is it terrorism?
I don't think there's any question that it's a form of terrorism.
This has gone right into the supply chain.
Right into the supply chain.
It sounds like you're genuinely worried.
Do you think there should be Condemnation for it?
Should other nations step in, including us?
I think it's going to be very important for the nations of the world to have a serious discussion about whether or not this isn't an area that everybody has to focus on, because if they don't try to deal with it now, mark my word, It is the battlefield of the future.
The battlefield of the future.
The one thing he did not mention and the reporter didn't ask him and maybe didn't want to go there is to whether his former colleagues and your former colleagues, the Central Intelligence Agency or MI6, knew about this ahead of time.
If they did, Phil, Would there have been some duty to warn or at least say to their friends in Mossad, what are you, crazy?
You're going to kill civilians.
You can't control where this is going.
This is not like a German army lieutenant putting a briefcase with explosives in it next to where Hitler was sitting.
This is not that.
This is putting explosives in devices that are randomly distributed.
You don't know who's going to be holding it or near it at the time it goes off.
Sure.
And I think Panetta has nailed it.
I mean, this is a technology, if you want to refer to it as that, which has, you know, possibilities for all kinds of people.
And this getting into the supply chain to turn something which is a consumer item into a weapon or weaponizing it in a way that you can activate it when you want to or need to, this is quite scary.
And I suggested earlier that what is going to happen, in fact, I saw a brief article yesterday that a couple of airlines have basically banned pagers and cell phones in their cabins.
And so this is the direction that commercial carriers are going to be starting to think about.
And governments are going to have to be starting to think about it, as Panetta suggested, because this is the way that rogue elements and risk-compulsive elements like the Israelis and the crazies who run their country are going to be thinking.
And it just won't be.
It won't only be the Israelis.
It will be the Israelis and others using the same tactic, using the same weapon.
And this gets to be very scary when you think of how this can be elevated and used.
And it's a bit of a horror show.
Secretary Panetta is the only American official, though retired, that I know who condemned this.
But there is an American official who mocked it.
This is Deborah Lipstadt.
I never heard of her or her job, but this is who she is and what she does.
She's the United States State Department envoy to combat anti-Semitism.
And she was speaking at the Israeli American Council, which is a pro-Netanyahu lobbying group funded by Miriam Adelson.
Watch this, Phil.
Cut number six.
After October 7th.
You want a beeper?
I can give you a few.
Well, that is really reprehensible.
I think it's wonderful that we taxpayers are paying for her office and her staff and her first-class travel.
So she can go around and accuse everybody of being an anti-Semite who says anything that's critical in any way about Israel or about the Israel lobby and the way it's corrupted our government and the way it's made all this happen.
Why isn't there a State Department spokesman with the government?
To speak up on this issue and say this is outrageous.
This is a crime against humanity.
It's an act of terrorism.
It's a war crime.
And we can't say a word about it?
That shows you how much Israel controls what goes on in the United States.
And of course the media is in on this too.
That's also control.
Let me switch gears just a little bit to the military aspect of all this.
In your opinion...
Well, clearly they're hoping for the United States because the 101st Airborne is on the way.
I gather one component or one battalion of it or a brigade, I don't know how big a unit, has already landed in Israel.
And there are three or four other C-17s in Cyprus on their way.
So, you know, this is their expectation.
They clearly think that if they kind of play the game right, and, you know, their game is very good at being perpetually the victim, and they'll play the game to make it look like Hezbollah is the bad guy in this case, and they'll do whatever they have to do, lie, cheat, steal, to bring the United States in as an ally against them.
And their real dream, of course, is to bring all of this together against Iran.
And depending on what happens in our election, they may very well be successful at that.
But here is the poster boy for attacking Iran.
Cut number 22. This is a dream scenario for Iran.
They're trying to suck...
October the 7th was designed to stop normalization.
Trump did the Abraham Accords.
Biden's been working to get Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel.
That's a nightmare for Iran.
So October the 7th was designed to stop that.
It was so horrific.
Now you see a front opening in the north.
So here's what I would tell my friends in Israel.
Do not give up on normalization with Saudi Arabia.
I know you've got to deal with Hezbollah.
There was an imminent attack.
But one of two things have to change in the Mideast.
We need to make game-changing peace, which is reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Israel, or game-changing military strategy.
Go into Lebanon to establish a buffer zone.
Won't work unless you hit Iran.
To my friends in Israel, you're fighting the proxies.
Fight the source, the great Satan.
This is the pressure that will be on Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, whoever wins in November.
Yeah, and Trump has more or less already indicated that he's prepared to do it.
He's prepared to bomb all their energy installations and their cities.
He's said it repeatedly.
So he's already on board.
Kamala Harris, I don't know, but I'm sure she's willing to fold just like they all do.
It's incredible.
I mean, this senator of ours, he's our senator, is he?
I mean, does he represent any American interests apart from killing other people?
And he's a monster, and he's always been a monster.
I wish he would put on a uniform, pick up a gun, and get in the front line of these young folks that are being destroyed, or their lives are being destroyed because of idiots like him.
He is in the military in some respect.
I believe he is either a lawyer in the Air Force Reserve or a judge in the Air Force Reserve, and I believe he has the title of a full bird colonel or maybe even a one-star.
I'm not sure, but I didn't mean to aggravate you, but he needs to be replied to, and you certainly reply to him on certain terms, that's for sure.
Phil, it's a pleasure, my friend, no matter what we're talking about.
Give my regards to Rupert and to Angela, and I hope you'll join us again next week.
Yeah, and I look forward to hearing your talk up in New York State on the weekend.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
I was happily there with you and Angela one year, and then I was in Italy another year, and now I'm happy to be there.
As you know, our colleague Scott Ritter, our friends.
Anya Parampol and Max Blumenthal will be there.
And Joe Lauria from Consortium News.
I just found out he's talking as well.
And, of course, Gerald, who loves to use words that we try to stay away from on this show, but the audience loves him.
Thank you, Phil.
We'll see you next week.
Bye-bye.
Yes, that, of course, is the same gathering about which you've heard Scott Ritter and me speak.
In Kingston, New York all day.
There's a lot of music there, a lot of food, and about four or five of us speaking.
Our talks will not be long, maybe 20 minutes each, interspersed, timed throughout the afternoon.
We have a busy afternoon for you tomorrow, a busy day.
Colonel Tony Schaefer at 8 in the morning.
Scott Ritter at noon.
Aaron Maté at 1 o 'clock.
Colonel Larry Wilkerson at 2 o 'clock.
It keeps coming.
Professor John Mearsheimer at 3 o 'clock.
Max Blumenthal at 4 o 'clock.
And from midnight in Moscow, Pepe Escobar at 5 o 'clock.
I better get my sleep tonight.
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