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Oct. 15, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:22
Phil Giraldi : Israel’s October Surprise
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, October 16, 2024.
Phil Giraldi joins us now.
Phil, when I asked you how you were doing a few minutes ago when we chatted off air, you told me you were unhappy.
I'm unhappy as well over the tragedies that continue in South Lebanon and in Gaza.
We will get to them in a moment.
I want your opinion on this IDF attack of UNIFIL.
We have President Macron condemning it.
We'll play that for you.
I don't know what value that is, but his condemnation.
We have a Chinese troop commander saying, don't go near our troops.
We'll play that for you.
You have reported that Spain, Italy, Ireland, and France, Well,
the key here is that a lot of the objections have also been coupled with statements from either heads of state or prime ministers that they are now supporting a trade embargo with Israel and certainly are not Allowing their industries to sell any weapons to them.
So there's some real teeth in this.
And when you get all of the Europeans starting to line up on this, this gets serious because the Europeans have been basically following, unfortunately, following the lead of the United States.
It's sort of looking the other way when Israel commits all these atrocities.
So maybe now we're going the other way.
And even the White House and State Department made sort of wishy-washy comments about how unfortunate these attacks on the peacekeepers have been.
And also, of course, today the Secretary General of the UN stated that the UNIFIL soldiers will be allowed to fire back.
So this is a change.
Did the IDF, I know this was reported, and you reported that it was reported.
Obviously, you're not an eyewitness, and I'm not.
Do you believe the IDF used chemical weapons on Unifil?
Well, the reporting is pretty strong.
It says that they broke and smashed in through the gate, used an armored vehicle to smash it through the gate of a base.
For UNIFIL and that they appear to have used chemical weapons because there were 15 soldiers inside the base, I believe they were Indonesian actually, who became ill.
And so the suspicion was very strongly that this was a chemical weapon attack and that was more or less confirmed by the medical authorities that were in place at that time.
You know, it may not be true, but certainly the Israelis have used chemical weapons and depleted type weapons in Lebanon before.
And this was considered a war crime even when they did this back in the 1980s.
Here's a commander of Chinese troops present as part of the UNIFIL.
At present, the conflict between Lebanon and Israel is intermittently escalating.
Due to the ongoing combat, several camps of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon have suffered damage.
Additionally, a portion of our peacekeeping comrades have been injured.
We continue to make every effort to maintain peace and stability in the region.
Here's President Macron using his harshest words.
So, Sonya, play cut number two and then follow it with the full screen of what Macron said earlier.
It is totally unacceptable for UNIFIL troops to be deliberately targeted by Israeli-armed forces.
We condemn it.
We do not and will not tolerate it happening again.
Now the full screen.
I will read it.
This is President Macron of France.
Mr. Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the United Nations.
Therefore, this is not the time to disregard the decisions of the UN.
If he means what he says, this is profound because the decisions of the UN are a security council which means endorsed by the United States.
Well, endorsed by the United States has a little And it's the United States alone, that criminal enterprise that we have here in Washington, that is allowing this to be sustained, allowing this to go on.
They could stop it in one day with a phone call.
One of the few statements that Donald Trump makes that's basically correct.
That, you know, we could have cut off weapons to Israel.
We should have cut off weapons to Israel months ago.
And now all of a sudden this thing is turning into a monster.
And Netanyahu is promising to take steps against Iran in the next three weeks, which may involve, God, we have U.S. troops on the ground.
It's coming together in a way that he wants it to come together because the U.S. troops could very well be a tripwire.
Could they not, Phil?
I think they're intended as a tripwire.
I don't know what Biden was thinking when he sent these troops there, but clearly Netanyahu has something else in mind.
He very much wants United States to go to war with Iran and to destroy Iran.
And we have senators like our good friend Lindsey Graham in South Carolina who want us basically to destroy the major oil facilities and military facilities of Iran.
And Donald Trump is saying the same thing.
if the Iranians do one more thing, he wants to see them destroyed.
So this is a situation that's evolving, but it's been a situation that our government And this has to stop.
We voters have to stop this.
I want to see a million people gathered around Capitol Hill and the White House and there from now until election time.
This is a serious issue.
This is World War III.
Millions of people could die.
I agree with you, but I don't think we're going to see it.
It doesn't matter who gets elected.
This time around, Trump or Harris.
Trump used an old-fashioned phrase you probably remember as a kid.
I mean, it's a little funny because the phrase is so absurd, but it's terrifying.
Iran should be bombed to smithereens, which, you know, there's no real translation of that into English, except it means generally is understood to mean destroyed beyond repair.
Why?
Because John...
Lindsey Graham, whose advice, thankfully, Trump rejected many times, says we should destroy their oil refineries.
Is Graham out of his mind?
Does he want the people in South Carolina to be paying $10 a gallon for gas if the oil refineries of Iran are destroyed?
Well, you'd have to concede the obvious, which is that people like Graham are owned by the Israel lobby.
And whatever the reasons for that are, whether it's money, whether it's giving them a certain kind of prestige or glamour, I don't really know.
I mean, Graham is a person who probably has two, no, maybe doesn't have two brain cells to rub together, but he has a big mouth.
And now this guy keeps getting reelected and reelected.
And Cruz and all these others.
I mean, and Cotton.
These people are all coming out with the same sort of thing.
And these people are getting elected.
They have no interest in the well-being of the people in their states.
They have no interest in the well-being of anyone except themselves.
And obviously the people that they're attached to, like the Israel lobby.
I've written three or four pieces in the past week.
You're keeping me busy trying to keep up with you.
And one of them is about three people, only one of whom I know of.
Matthew Brodsky, Stuart Seldowitz, and Amos Hochstein.
We know who Mr. Hochstein is, Israeli-born, former IDF, dual citizen, one of the leaders of American foreign policy and whatever negotiations were going on in the Middle East, and one of the senior advisors to Biden.
According to Ritter, Hochstein's been stripped of his staff.
It's just him and the secretary.
I don't know what that means.
Poor Brodsky and Seldowitz.
Why are we concerned about them?
Why do you think about them?
These are four.
These are former consultants who have basically been deeply embedded in the United States government, making policy about Israel and the Middle East.
So what kind of policy do you think comes out of that process?
They're both Jewish.
They both are radically pro-Zionist and pro-Netanyahu.
And Brodsky just came out with saying that he would like to see That he would like to see the Israelis, who of course are attacking the UNIFIL peacekeepers in Lebanon, he would like to see them to bomb and kill all the Irish soldiers who were up there among the peacekeepers.
You can imagine this went over pretty well in Ireland.
It went over pretty well with me.
It went over pretty well with Ray McGovern.
The Irish...
And even though they were fired at, none of them was hit and they didn't fight back.
That's because McGovern was not commanding them.
If McGovern had been commanding them, you know they would have fought back.
Me too.
We shouldn't laugh at it.
We're laughing because Ray is such a wonderful character.
But this is very serious.
What do you think Netanyahu's plans are?
With respect to retaliation against Iran, and what can he do without the United States helping him?
Those are two separate questions.
What are his plans?
What do you think he's up to?
Well, he basically cannot defeat Iran and Iran's friends in the Middle East all by himself.
So his plan is he has to get the United States.
Into the game, and into the game means that the United States would have to be somehow coerced into doing the heavy lifting, the bulk of the fighting.
Now, how do you do that?
Well, you do that by attacking something in Iran or something associated with Iran in such a fashion that Iran is required to retaliate.
And when they retaliate, this And that will be the cause of the war, of America entering the war, to defend.
Israel, to help Israel in its hour of need.
You can hear the stuff just gushing out of the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Ah, poor little Israel.
Again, the victim.
This is the Holocaust all over again.
So let's go in and really take it out on Iran.
And this is where it's going.
And that's what Netanyahu wants.
What will Russia do if Netanyahu gets what he wants?
Well, I think that's still up in the air.
Some people that you've had on your show and also elsewhere in the media are saying one thing and some people are saying the other.
Some are saying that Russia would be playing a cautious game and wouldn't necessarily get that deep into it.
And others are saying that Russia is basically in the same sense that the U.S. is giving guarantees to Israel.
At the point of giving guarantees to Iran.
So this could be interesting.
And of course, China's not out of the picture either.
Were you surprised to learn that some of the UNIFIL troops were Chinese?
Apparently 400 of them are.
The fellow that we had on a few minutes ago as their commander.
Yeah.
Actually, I didn't know that.
And most of them are Europeans, apparently, because they're the ones that were closest to the action and were brought in first.
But yeah, apparently it is really a multi-national force and it reflects world opinion or impacts on world opinion when you start shooting these people who are there on a peace mission.
Here's the president of Iran seated next to President Putin at the end of last week.
Cut number three.
We have many opportunities now.
We should help each other in many areas.
Our viewpoints and positions in the world are much closer to each other than to those of others.
God willing, we will take part in the BRICS summit and we'll do everything to sign agreements that will allow beneficial mutual cooperation.
Larry Johnson thinks they actually signed a defence pact right then and there, not in public.
Ritter thinks...
They're delaying signing it because Putin is advising restraint, but Putin will not advise restraint if Israel and the United States unload on Iran.
Has Netanyahu stated that he will not attack oil refineries or nuclear facilities?
That's still apparently up in the air.
It's clear that that was under discussion when he was talking to Biden on the phone.
And there are a couple of reports, which you've probably also seen, saying that Biden came off the phone swearing.
And so the discussion probably did not go well.
The question is, Biden's got an election coming up in three weeks, or rather his party does.
He certainly will do everything in his power to win that election by avoiding anything that will tilt the balance against him when the voting actually takes place.
And this is why I wrote an article that suggested that, but on Netanyahu's side, he might be thinking of something like an October surprise to tip that balance.
And what might Netanyahu do as an October surprise to tip the ballot?
Well, let's just put it this way.
The Israel lobby is almost certainly the most powerful foreign policy lobby in the United States, has a lot of money, has a lot of media connections, media ownership.
There are all kinds of things we could do to shift the balance maybe just enough to take a tight election and turn it towards the party.
That is seen as more strongly and enthusiastically pro-attacking Iran and maybe doing whatever Israel wants.
This has been Trump's history.
So let's consider that.
I mean, that's the original October surprise.
Right, right.
Today, Bill Casey would have been arrested under the Logan Act for what he did.
But anyway, he delayed the release or persuaded the Iranians to delay the release of the American hostages kept in or confined in the Iranian embassy until after Reagan was elected.
If you recall, they were actually released at the moment Reagan was I don't know.
That would get him a single vote.
Probably not.
He probably would have AIPAC and that crowd do certain things subtly to move the needle towards Trump.
No?
I don't think he would have to do anything as blatant as an endorsement.
There would be articles coming out in various places in maybe the week or two before the election itself, which are hinting that maybe there are certain character flaws, maybe some Epstein material leaking out about Donald Trump.
You know, that kind of thing.
It wouldn't take much to tip it, just like the original October surprise.
I mean, basically, it was a minor thing, wasn't it?
It wasn't exactly like the hostages deal was burning a hole in the heart of every American.
This was just something that added a little fuel to the fire.
Who does AIPAC want?
I mean, Vice President Harris's husband and children are Jewish.
She claims she wouldn't do anything.
I don't know why she said this, but she did.
She wouldn't do anything different than Joe Biden did.
Trump wants to bomb Iran.
I mean, who does AIPAC favor?
So it's Tweedledee and Tweedledum from our perspective, no?
Well, again, this comes down to personalities and it comes down to comfort level.
And I think that certainly what I've been reading in the Israeli media indicate that Netanyahu himself favors Trump.
And he's not hidden that to his close advisors.
So there is that factor which comes into it.
And also, let's face this, recent opinion polls indicate that most Democratic voters are opposed to what Israel is doing in Gaza and in Lebanon.
Most voters.
You also have a faction in the Democratic Party, which is the peace faction, the progressives, who have spoken out against what Israel is doing.
And so if I were Netanyahu and I were looking at it, why would I want to have another democratic regime with all these weaklings and people that are not fully supportive where I can get the Republicans and I'll have it all?
Last subject.
The Washington Post reports, now we can stop right there, meaning the CIA has leaked, but the Washington Post reports that the United States has said to the Netanyahu government in writing, if you don't allow humanitarian aid into Gaza in the next 30 days, God knows how many people will die in 30 days, we will consider halting American Military support.
Is that credible?
It's credible because of the 30 days.
30 days takes it to beyond the election.
So it's moot.
It will not happen no matter who is elected because after the election, it's irrelevant.
And Netanyahu knows this.
If Biden really wanted to put some teeth into it, it would have been a week or two weeks.
And Biden also, of course, has just, in the last two days, sent this new anti-air defense system with 100 soldiers over.
A stupid move, if that's seriously what you intend.
So no, he's not going to take any steps.
She's not going to take any steps.
And Trump sure as hell is not going to take any steps.
Here's a Palestinian journalist who was an eyewitness to the bombing of the tents outside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
This is a tearjerker.
Cut number nine.
They burned people alive.
I don't know.
They picked this muscle to cause this fire at this time of the night to kill people while they are sleeping.
And then these people are waking up, watching their bodies burning.
Turning into black and having their last breath in front of the camera.
That's what happened.
They did this.
They did this.
I know that you will not be able to watch the videos, to watch the pictures, to hear them screaming while they are burning and no one can do anything for them.
The Israeli army did this.
Does this resonate in the West?
Yeah, it'll resonate in the West.
It surely resonated with me.
This is sickening.
I watched the videos.
They attacked a hospital in the middle of the night where people were camped out and some of them getting treatment.
One little child was shown in one of the videos.
His or her arm up in the air with the IV still sticking into it, and he or she was burning to death while this was going on.
And this is revolting.
And the fact that our government is complicit in this is revolted.
Revolting also.
And every American should be sickened by this.
And every American should be full of revulsion about this.
And to go back to what I said before, that's why I like to see a million people gathered outside the White House telling Mr. Biden and whoever should succeed him that this is just not acceptable.
This is not what our country is all about.
Thank you, Phil.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your passion.
Gerald Salenti, who knows how to whip up a crowd, along with Max Blumenthal, will do so in front of the White House after Election Day.
But thank you very much for your time.
We'll see you again next week.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
Sure.
Coming up tomorrow, Thursday, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at 9 in the morning, Matt Ho at 11 in the morning, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at 1 in the afternoon.
Professor John Mearsheimer at 3 in the afternoon.
Our dear friend Aaron Maté at 4 in the afternoon.
And from midnight in Moscow at 5.30 tomorrow afternoon, Pepe Escobar.
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