Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Can Diplomacy Bring Middle East Peace?

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Can Diplomacy Bring Middle East Peace?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 Tuesday, August 13, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be with us in just a moment to talk about will there ever be the peaceful resolution of the two-state solution problem in the Middle East, as well as late breaking news from Ukraine, from Gaza, and from Jerusalem. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. You have $100 in the bank.

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sources that the Ukrainian invasion in Kursk, Russia, was planned by NATO for several months, practiced or rehearsed in Poland. Polish, Estonian, Romanian, British, German, and Americans participated. Russian surveillance reports hearing English voices with, quote, American accents, some of whom are now dead. Does any of this surprise you? No, not at all. Clearly, this is a war between the United States first and foremost and Russia. Americans are on the ground. Americans are providing the so-called intelligence, though it's not very intelligent. We have NATO forces throughout Ukraine. Americans are picking the targets, managing the weapon systems, of course, needless to say, financing the war as well. So this is a war, not even a proxy war as it's sometimes called, between the U.S. and Russia. This is a war between the United States and Russia in which Ukraine is doing the

preponderance of the dying. Nothing happens in Ukraine without the U.S. approval or the U.S. guidance. Now, let's also say that this recent incursion into Kursk, this is Russian pre-1991 territory, is most likely going to prove to be a disaster. So this is not only a NATO-led operation and a US-led operation, but one that is most likely to fail. It's most likely to fail for two reasons. One is that Ukraine has pulled key parts of its remaining military forces, both equipment and the most important brigades to this area, and thereby essentially vacated vulnerable areas in other points of the contact line. So in this sense, Russia is already making very significant, very rapid breakthroughs in the preceding contact line in the Donbass, in Povrozhk in particular, an area that is extremely important from a logistical point of view. And so Ukraine has already taken away

a great many of its defenses. Second, the incursion itself into Kursk is likely to prove to be limited, not to have strategic effects, and is likely to be defeated. So the end result of this is probably to accelerate Ukraine's overall military defeat. But the fact that you have NATO forces on the ground doing the fighting, doing the intelligence, the surveillance, the guidance, the management of the weapon systems, and so forth. None of that is a surprise. All of that is very well known. So you have an invasion into Russia financed in large part by Americans using American equipment, American intelligence, much of the American equipment manned by Americans, A, is it fair to say the United States invaded Russia? And B, how would we react if the same thing happened up in

Alaska? The whole point of American behavior is that we never ask the question, ever, how would we react on the other side? The whole point of American foreign policy is the belief by these officials that we can do what we want with impunity against any norm, standard, or international law, principle, vote of the UN, UN Security Council treaty, or anything else that we would say would limit the behavior of others. After all, the most basic point that the United States has said for 201 years since the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine to the rest of the world, stay out of the Western Hemisphere. We regard any incursion in the Western Hemisphere anywhere. That could be from the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego to our immediate neighborhood as an infringement on U.S. security. But when we say, but of course we have the right to push NATO right up to Russia's borders, put in missile systems wherever we want, engage Georgia in the Caucasus region as a, quote, North Atlantic partner as part of NATO. Oh, that's our right.

So everything about American foreign policy is built on hypocrisy from beginning to end. And then we can't understand why that's just a little bit annoying to others and gets us into perpetual war. Switching gears, I'm going to run a clip of national security, Israeli national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, leading a few thousand Zionists into the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He stops and speaks to the camera. He speaks in Hebrew. Both his words and the translation are very fast. I'm going to do my best to keep up with them for the benefit of those who are listening to this program rather than watching it. And then I'll ask you the significance of the invasion of this mosque in East Jerusalem.

We are at the Temple Mount at Tisha B'Av. Today we commemorate the destruction of the Temple, but we must also honestly acknowledge that there is significant here regarding chains, the sight of Jews praying. As I said, our policy is to permit prayer, but I'll say something else. We must win this war. We must win, not go to summits in Doha or in Cairo, but defeat them, bring them to their knees. That's the message. We can defeat Hamas, bring it to its knees. How counterproductive is something like this at a time like this?

Well, this is one of the most sensitive areas in the world for Muslim populations all over the world. This is one of the holiest sites for Muslims. And it is absolutely supposed to be against Israeli policy to have such incursions. It was such an incursion in early October last year that was the prelude to the October 7th attack by Hamas into Israel. This is something almost never reported. But these steps by Ben-Gavir, who is shockingly vulgar, genocidal, extremist, and dangerous for everybody, for us, for the Palestinians, of course, but also for Israel's survival, because he flaunts extremism in the most reckless way. And I believe that Israel is putting its survival at risk. Oh, he's flaunting his power. We'll bring them to their knees. But it's this kind of extremism

and zealotry that is the biggest threat to Israel's survival itself. Israel has willfully isolated itself from the entire world community, other than perhaps the Biden White House and the Biden foreign policy team. But I include the American people as well, who are aghast at what Israel is doing because of the extremism that Ben-Gavir represents and leads. So I haven't seen this before. I've been in meetings in Italy for the last several hours. But when you brought this to my attention, Judge, I was shocked because it's hard to think of more provocative behavior. Perhaps in response to this provocative behavior, perhaps in response to the murder of the chief Hamas negotiator by the Israelis, Hamas announced within the past half hour it will no longer participate in the ceasefire negotiations. The stated purpose is because Israel keeps upping the ante every time Hamas agrees that something Israel changes its demand. Does that surprise you? Nothing surprises me because, again, fundamentally when you see a conflict,

you have to think about politics and the underlying issue. There is one underlying issue in the Israeli conflict, and that is the denial of the most basic political rights of the millions of Palestinians who are now occupied by Israel or under the bombing of Israel, under the rubble that Israel has caused under the murderous behavior of illegal Israeli settlers in occupied territories. But essentially, Israel has established an apartheid state where it rules over millions of Palestinians and kills them when they protest or when they react to this profound and continuing and illegal injustice. And that situation has gone on for decades. So what we are seeing now is just more extreme and violent, and I would say, according to international law, genocidal behavior by Israel, but of a kind that Israel has been carrying out for decades. When you have that

kind of behavior, what kind of agreements can be reached? This is not a government, I mean the Netanyahu government, that is looking for peace. This is a government that is looking for complete domination over millions of people, up to and including killing them when they resist. So this is what this is about. And I think the Biden White House is completely complicit in this. This is a disaster of U.S. foreign policy. Let's be clear. All of this is predictable, knowable. the Congress, which is even more disgraceful if one can say it, giving more than 50 standing ovations to Netanyahu when he appeared before the Congress recently, is a complete accomplice to these massacres. So how could one expect something to come out of this? But as I say, it profoundly threatens Israel's own survival because it is so reckless, so extreme, so illegal, based on one ruling after the next of the International Court of Justice, that Israel finds itself entirely isolated from all except the U.S. foreign policy

and political class. People are aghast. I'm going to go right into your wheelhouse now. To what extent can diplomacy be expected to succeed in this environment? Or stated differently, will there ever be a two-state solution without the imposition of it by an outside force? Well, the U.S. position, which is a completely phony position, not just a failed position, but a phony position, is that there must be an agreement between the two parties. But this is utterly absurd, Orwellian, because it means that Israel can veto the basic political rights of the Palestinian people, despite the repeated calls by the United Nations, both the General Assembly and the UN Security Council, and the

repeated decisions of the International Court of Justice, that Israel's behavior is plainly, flatly, brutally illegal. But the White House position, the Israel lobby imposed position, if you will, or the one that it has delivered into the mouths of American officials, is that, oh, the two-state solution, we're in favor, but it must be agreed by the two parties. That's nonsense. It must be put in place by the United Nations over the kicking and screaming of Israel, if that's how it's going to be. Because Israel has to follow international law, and international law needs to be enforced by the UN Security Council, and the rulings of the International Court of Justice need to be enforced. Now, of course, every time we speak, I emphasize the fact that the U.S.

foreign policy is despicable and disgraceful. And Biden is one of the worst presidents of modern history in this. Shameful, lying, arrogant, and solving no problems whatsoever. Am I mincing my words? No, no, no, not at all. But your words are eminently defensible. The point I'm making is that we know what the answer needs to be. The whole world knows what the answer needs to be. And it can be that way because the UN, it has under the UN charter, all of the power that it needs to put this solution into place. It has that power. The United States remains the lone veto, not because the American people want that, but because the Israel lobby has been able to get American officials to raise their hand to veto peace repeatedly.

But I believe that this is short-lived. Let me just stop you for a second. We are looking at Zionists laying on their stomachs, blocking the path, the entry into the Al-Aqsa Mosque. This is four hours old, these videos. Yeah, this is all designed, it seems, to provoke the final battle. Is this really what we want? Is this really what we're defending? The great war to end all war by ending the world. But these are crazy people, this Ben-Gavir, his followers. They're not only violating every international standard and international law, and that's, again, not my opinion, that's the decisions repeatedly

of the UN and the International Court of Justice, including the recent decisions that the entire Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are blatantly and plainly illegal. But they seem to be designed to have a war of all against all. And it's insane. And by the way, I hate to say it, but there are repeated times in the history of the Jewish state in this area where zealots have brought about the destruction of the state. I mean, the Jewish zealots have brought about the destruction of the state, I mean the Jewish zealots, through this kind of shocking extremism. It's unbelievable. Well, Netanyahu is obviously a captive of the hard-right zealots.

And a creator of it as well, because the fundamental part of his party, the Likud, since its formation, has been no Palestinian state. And that means no peace. So this has been core to his politics his entire lifetime. But none of this could succeed. None of Israel's thumbing its nose at international law, international norms, natural rights, humanitarian rights, basic right and wrong, basic good and evil, without enabling by the United States. Agreed? Not for one day. Not literally for one day, by the way. We arm Israel out of stockpiles every day. We provide the targeting. We provide the backup. As soon as Israel murdered murdered the Hamas leadership, murdered in Tehran on the occasion of the inauguration of the new Iranian president, a moderate who wants to make peace with the world. As soon as Israel committed

that, I don't think it took five minutes for our Secretary of Defense to say, we back Israel 100%. Because this is how it works. Two weeks ago in Washington, D.C., there were great celebrations for the failed alliance called NATO. There were no, the 75th anniversary of it. Today, or this week, is the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, which the United States authored. Hang on to your chair. I'm going to read to you what Secretary Blinken said today about the Geneva Conventions. Today we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The United States reaffirms our steadfast commitment to respecting international humanitarian law and mitigating

suffering in armed conflict. We call on others to do the same. Perhaps the greatest lie he's ever told, Jeff. You know, he's a stunning failure, and we see these failures on display every day. It's hard to imagine because there have been so many disastrous secretaries of state, but he certainly ranks among the biggest disasters. It's not even worth listening to the words. I mean, of course, it's not even close to worth listening to the words. They're completely meaningless. They have no bearing whatsoever on actual U.S. policy at any moment. What is your best judgment as to Iran's response to the assassination in Tehran? A pinprick, a major incursion, Iran alone or Iran with Hezbollah

financed by Russia? As long as Israel maintains this grotesque extremism and this provocative show of extremism as Ben-Gavir's walk through Al-Aqsa Mosque today, we can be sure that at one point or another, there will be a massive regional war. Because Israel is intent on provoking it. And we don't have, it seems in the United States, the wisdom in our political class to stop this. So I don't know whether it will be today or this week or next week, but what we have is a completely lawless and renegade or rogue state of Israel and the United States bound to the hip at every moment with it, no matter what its behavior, whether it is bombing and killing innocent civilians, starving hundreds of thousands to the point of death, assassinating counterpart peace negotiators or ceasefire negotiators in foreign capitals, bombing diplomatic facilities as Israel did in Damascus, and then the U.S. stands in the Security Council to block

any kind of censure, which by the way is part of Geneva Conventions not to attack other diplomatic facilities. So as long as this kind of recklessness, lawlessness, and flagrant boasting of unlimited extremism goes on, we will have a disastrous war. It's clear. Israel's going to keep it, it seems. It wants to draw the U.S. into this regional war, which, because Iran has its allies, Russia and China and others, could turn into a world war, could turn into a nuclear war is something that we should be working every moment to avoid. But we don't have a president that perhaps is even physically or mentally capable of this at this point. he showed his mental and physical capacity, he didn't show his judgment to do something different. I say repeatedly, it is the job of the American president first and foremost to put a brake on the war machine of the United States, which is always revving. And it's revving right now. And the job of the president of the United States is to stop it by putting his foot on the brakes

so we don't have World War III. And this is the drama that we're in right now, because we have both in Ukraine and in Gaza and Israel, we have the makings of World War III because we have completely reckless countries, reckless governments that are doing whatever provocation they can to create a wider war. Ukraine, which is losing on the battlefield, sent its drones just in the last couple of days to attack directly the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and set one of the cooling towers on fire. Then, of course, some stupid lies about it,

but everything is known, everything is understood. But where is the United States telling Ukraine, don't attack a nuclear power plant? You think Blinken is saying this? Not that I can see. The president of the United States, anybody? No, because we don't have the makings of even the most basic sanity of our foreign policy right now. The war machine revs and the president is who knows where. It's not just the president to Professor Sachs, it's the Congress as well. Look at their disgraceful embrace of Netanyahu, which our

friend Scott Ritter has described as, what do you expect? The audience was bought and paid for. But that's the point with the Congress. We legalized mass corruption, billions and billions and billions of dollars changing hands for what purpose? To reelect these people who do nothing for our security, but they have a self-governing machine. They take the money, they use it for their re-election, and they give a green light to the war machine. And this is what we have right now. It's very dramatic. Professor Sachs, thank you, my dear friend. I know it's very late where you are. I'm deeply appreciative, particularly when you get passionate. I apologize for raising your blood pressure with the Tony Plinkin clip, but I couldn't resist. And breaking news is bad. It's bad every day.

But your analysis helps us to understand it, my dear friend. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Look forward to seeing you next week. We'll see you next week. Thanks. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye. A great man indeed with just an encyclopedic knowledge of all these things. Tomorrow, Wednesday at 11 in the morning Eastern, Aaron Matei. At two in the afternoon Eastern, Colonel Douglas McGregor. At three in the afternoon Eastern, in his regular Wednesday time slot, the great Phil Giraldi. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.