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Jan. 27, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
22:28
Alastair Crooke : Trump, Netanyahu, and Collision
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, January 27th, 2025.
Alistair Crook will be with us in just a moment on our Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu on a collision course.
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Thank you for your time.
Always a pleasure, of course.
Is Benjamin Netanyahu on shaky ground politically, domestically?
And health, yes.
That is very much the case.
Because, as you know, that it was Netanyahu who really did not want.
The, if you like, hostage deal to go through.
He was not keen on it to go through because his right-wing Smotrich, Ben-Gavir and the right of the party, the right of the Netanyahu camp, all want to see, if you like, Gaza clean of all Arabs and it to be settled by Israeli settlers in their place.
And therefore, one of the deals when he signed, if you like, when he signed off in cabinet, not in the original deal, but he agreed to Smotrich saying that at the end of the exchange of hostages,
we will go back to war in Gaza.
We will destroy Gaza.
And that puts him very much at odds with Trump.
But there he has a catch-22 situation.
Netanyahu, if he doesn't, if you like, blame Hamas and break the Ciswa and say it's all over and now we're going back to war, then his government will crash because Ben-Gavir has left the government already.
He had six seats, seven seats, and Smotrich has six.
It is going to be very difficult to keep the government alive in those circumstances.
It will be a major crisis.
But I think more than that, something else very dramatic has happened in this period.
You probably saw, many of the people watching would have seen the release of the four hostages, all of them the Israeli army young ladies who were the observers on the fence.
All of those were released, and they came back, and as you saw, smiling, waving, in very good health, and smartly dressed.
And it's had a huge impact, as you can imagine, on Israeli public as a whole.
They want the other hostages back now.
I mean, it's much more determined.
They saw them come back.
They were in good health.
They didn't go to hospital or anything.
And indeed, those girls, they were in a car and they have been filmed and they said, well, we're very grateful to Al-Qassam for looking after us so well for feeding us and clothing us and looking after us.
So there is a big shift, I think, in public sentiment.
So for Netanyahu now to try and sabotage it in order to be able to go back To putting the IDF into Gaza and destroying it and pushing more Palestinians out, it's going to be a lot more difficult.
And it's going to be doubly difficult because what we've seen, and I must say it's an amazing sight, all the Palestinians from the north are heading back across the Netzerim Strip,
which was the sort of no-go line, to northern Gaza.
One and a half million are arriving there and they are cheering and in a victorious mood.
We will never be displaced from this place.
This is where we're from.
This is where we're staying.
Well, no.
I mean, the Israeli army have now one and a half million Palestinians back in the area they thought they had completely cleared and emptied of Palestinians.
How are they going to start?
Are they going to start again?
And what will that mean for Trump at the same time?
Because Trump, if you like, well, and certainly Steve Whitcoff nailed his cuts to the ceasefire, to having the exchange of hostages.
I mean, he's committed on that.
He's up for that now.
He's bought into that.
And so...
What would it mean for Trump if Netanyahu went for, if you like to say, declare the ceasefire breached and therefore we're going to go back to war in Gaza, we're going to go back to bombing them, we're going to go back to destroying them?
I think it will put Netanyahu very much at odds with Trump.
Trump will want the ceasefire to continue.
He will certainly want an end to the massacres going on in Gaza in this period.
But that is the secret clause that was granted to Smotrich, not in the original ceasefire agreements, nothing of that sort in it.
It is in the cabinet meeting, the six-hour cabinet meeting that followed it.
He made this undertaking that there would be a return, there would be no Well, then this is not a ceasefire if Netanyahu believes and has told his right-wing supporters that he,
on his own, can declare it invalid and move the truths back in.
This is just a charade intended to please Joe Biden in the death throes of his administration and give Donald Trump crowing rights.
Yeah. I mean, it's not a ceasefire in the sense that we're only at the first stage, which lasts 16 days.
But the bulk of the hostages that are going to be released come later, after 16 days, and then after 42 days.
And that's what the Israeli public are waiting for.
That's what they want.
They want them all back now, because they've seen them.
And they've seen what's stayed.
You know, most of them are alive still.
And I think that surprised people.
Most of them, they're in reasonably good health, as you can see on the video now.
And to think that they are actually saying nice things about the way their captors treated them has to be boggling Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gavir's mind.
Absolutely. It's absolutely causing chaos.
And at the same time, we have not only that, But also, the Trump administration, or the putative Trump team, were responsible for the ceasefire in Lebanon.
Israel was supposed to have left Lebanon yesterday, and they haven't done so.
And they're saying now that they're going to stay till the 16th of February.
Well, there's been another mass...
A wave of population of the Lebanese coming down from the north, trying to get into their homes in the south of Lebanon.
All of them parading Hezbollah and Hamas flags.
I mean, huge.
At the moment, they're stopped.
But, you know, this is actually very good news for Hezbollah, more than anything else, because, you know, this is what Hezbollah is saying.
Look, you know, you, the new government, the Saudis and the Americans, you've installed President Haon and he's supposed to take over and Hezbollah is supposed to stand down and be pushed away from the political front.
And look, you're incapable of even managing a ceasefire with Israel.
You're incapable of getting the Israelis out of that.
Your agreement was worthless.
Again, it puts Trump on the spot.
And then, you know, I think with this, what's going on?
I mean, in a sense, we've got a split-screen presidency taking place.
What Trump has been saying about, on the sort of issues of particularly the cultural issues, about DEI.
About what he's saying about free speech.
No more misinformation, malinformation, disinformation attempts to use these to convey a single unified position.
All of this has to go.
It shocked Europe.
I mean, it's really, you know, broken the narrative.
What do you think of Europe for the last 20 years in all of these?
About, you know, the green scam, how to run an economy, how to get the prices down.
All of these sort of domestic issues is like a whirlwind hitting Davos, hitting Europe.
And it seems as if they're intent on regime change in Germany.
I want to play a clip from a former Israeli negotiator.
You may know him from your One cannot underestimate the impact on the Israeli public psyche of
the release.
The initial three who were released.
And, of course, everyone, therefore, saw those images.
They've been told Al-Qassam defeated.
They've been told the public has turned against them.
They've been told so many things.
And then they saw those images.
An occupying army armed and aided by the most powerful military in the world, the U.S. A nuclear armed state?
Israel. In a struggle between that and a resistance movement, we saw a very powerful display, and Israelis saw that.
We're being told, By Israeli analysts, talking heads, political leaders, and their backers in the West.
That the next phase has to be to move forward.
We have to have the demilitarization of...
The reality is the most significant force in Gaza, by a long stretch, is Hamas.
Al-Qassam emerges from this with a very strong narrative.
Israel's narrative doesn't look so good at all.
What do you say about that, Alistair?
Well, Daniel is exactly right on the bottom with what he's saying.
But actually, and although you said it was shocking, he underplays it.
The Israelis, I mean, in the Hebrew language, in their channels, are saying it much more bluntly.
We've been completely defeated.
Look what we see.
We see Hamas on the streets of Gaza, running it, organizing it.
And as many people said, look at them.
I mean, they're in smart uniforms.
They have the latest Israeli weapons they've taken from them.
They are managing.
They are clearly in charge of Gaza.
What was this war about?
We've lost this war completely.
This is what they are saying.
We've lost it.
And one, Nathan Banea, I know him also.
He's a celebrated journalist then.
And he said, at the end of it, all we've done is we've substitute Sinwa, Yahya Sinwa, for his young brother, Mohammed Sinwa, who's now in charge of Gaza.
That's all we've achieved.
After all these deaths of Israeli IDF forces, after all this bombing and destruction, we have actually only achieved substituting Yahya for Mohammed Sinwa.
That's it.
We've been a complete failure.
This is having a big impact, and this is coupled with the things that you mentioned to begin with, too, which are very important.
Lenya's health is very bad at the moment.
He's been making very powerful pleas to the court where he was supposed to appear today.
And he's been saying, you know, he hasn't healed from his operation.
He can't manage.
He's facing a wave of political crises.
He can't cope with having to come to court.
And he's really in a bad condition.
And we know he's in a bad condition because we've been told by Gantz.
The former defence minister that he's recently had a pacemaker put in his heart, and it has to be monitored very carefully.
And his family are not that.
They are in Florida.
His wife has been there for a long time and doesn't seem likely to be coming back.
As you know, his son and his wife have been the power behind Netanyahu, driving him on.
But there's been an internal struggle inside the family between particularly the son.
This is Netanyahu just a few hours ago, Alistair, going to where he absolutely does not want to go.
A public courtroom in which he is a defendant in a bribery and corruption case.
Did you say there was a physical attack between the son and the father?
There are reports of that by very serious.
That's why and that afterwards because, you know, the son has been sort of exiled to Miami where he is staying.
And according to the report, Shin Bet, the security service, told him to get out of the country and go and stay in Miami.
And his mother is there too.
And she hasn't come back.
She says she's got COVID, so she can't come back.
What is the relationship, if we know of it, between Netanyahu and Trump?
Are they on a collision course?
Yes, I mean, they are politically because Netanyahu can do one of two things.
Either he can keep his coalition alive or he goes ahead and he releases the hostages from Gaza, which is what Trump wants.
Either he does what Trump wants or he can't keep his coalition alive.
He's caught in this.
Chris, put up Netanyahu in court again, please, the B-roll.
How does this play to the Israeli There is a huge turmoil.
And what I was going to say, because, you know, it's bringing out lots, not only in this, but in many other areas, corruption and, you know, poor governance in Israel.
And so the country is really sort of close to schism.
I don't know what will be the consequences of it.
I don't know what will be the outcome.
It will certainly cause a huge effect in Israel.
And, I mean, what Daniel Levy just said to you was absolutely You know, that was, he was talking about the first three coming out.
Then we had the four military young ladies come out and, you know, smiling and happy.
And people were dressed back.
Wow. All of the hostages out.
And if he sabotages it, as he's promised, you know, as Netanyahu promises Hamas will sabotage it.
Then his coalition is over.
Then who's going to run?
And what is going to be the policy of Israel?
So far, I mean, all the Israelis can see what's happened in Gaza.
After more than a year, there were summons in their bright uniforms, managing things, hearing crowds.
One and a half million of them heading back, even though there's nothing to go home to in the north of Gaza.
They are determined to go back, and that is their place, and they're not going to be removed from it.
And I think it was a bit unfortunate, Trump's comment about his suggestion that he's going to ask Jordan and Egypt to take these people so that...
We can clear out Gaza and then rebuild it with nice sort of combat.
I think he was shooting from the hip when he said that.
But we can discuss that the next time we are together.
Alistair, thank you very much.
Thank you for your insight, as always.
We'll look forward to seeing you again from another part of the world next week.
Thank you.
Coming up later today at 10 o'clock this morning, Ray McGovern at 11.30 this morning.
Larry Johnson at 1 this afternoon.
Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, a man who has spent his lifetime battling for peace.
And at 4 o'clock, another warrior for peace, Scott Ritter.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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