Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Can Israel Survive Its Failures?

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Can Israel Survive Its Failures?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Thank you. I want to spend some time with you on the announcement today by the Saudis of their conditions for a solution whereby they would recognize Israel, Israel recognize them, and they'd have normal relations. But before we get there, one or two questions on Ukraine and one or two questions on Gaza. As we speak, the president is trying to persuade Republicans and the Congress to give him $61 billion to send to Ukraine. Do you think these people understand that the government is on its last legs, that it's not stable, that it doesn't have the manpower with which to use $60 billion worth of equipment, and that this is futile? No, I don't think they understand because there's no real debate, discussion, any kind of sophistication whatsoever on this issue in the Congress or from the White House. These are senators who vote with the

military-industrial complex. They vote with the CIA position. And it's pretty straightforward that they are not paying any attention whatsoever to a fulminant political crisis in Kiev, a devastating bloodshed on the battlefield because Ukraine, as a result of failed U.S. policies, is in a disastrous shape on the battlefield. And it's amazing to me, despite all of this, there's no intelligent discussion whatsoever, no discussion about what negotiations would mean, no discussion about the implications of the failure of Ukraine's so-called counter offensive last summer. It's all dishonest. Basically, Biden, Nuland, Sullivan, Blinken, CIA gambled. They gambled with the Ukrainian lives. They gambled with Ukrainian territory and they gambled with our money. It was a disastrous gamble. Clearly, I've been saying so for years. It failed.

And because they're gamblers with other people's lives and other people's money, they just keep going. And the senators are pretty much the same. I mean, Chuck Schumer hasn't said an intelligent word about this. Blumenthal, the other senators, they just vote money for the military. That's their MO. Could you argue that they're not only gamblers, they're killers, that the United States of America is effectively waging war on the Palestinian people in Gaza? Because we know that war would not be waged without U.S. support and equipment and cash. Well, if we stick with Ukraine for just one moment, we have senators that say, literally,

this is great money. No Americans are dying. There have been hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian deaths and devastating wounds and more than 20,000 this past month. Do you think these senators care or even recognize this? Something's seriously wrong. So this is, it's par for the course. America has been dropping bombs on civilian populations, causing mayhem. Our foreign policy is based on mayhem. It's based on a lot of secrecy. The American people are not told almost anything. There's almost no open debate about anything. And these senators don't care. Now, when it comes to Gaza, it's even worse. There are nearly 30,000

deaths, probably more if the bodies under the rubble are eventually counted. And 70% of those deaths are women and children. But it's even worse than that. There is now the finding by the International Court of Justice, as we have discussed at length, finding reasonable grounds that Israel is engaging in genocide, according to the 1948 Genocide Convention. Now, this makes the United States directly an accomplice to that. And do these senators know? Do they care? When Netanyahu says today, in rejecting a ceasefire proposal of Hamas, the only answer is total victory. And apparently the Israeli defense forces are ordered to Rafah in the south where they told people to flee for their safety. Does any word of this get discussed in the U.S. Senate? Is there even a moment of honesty about this? Is there even a moment of recognition that these senators are

voting for American complicity in what is likely to be found in genocide? No, there's not even a moment's discussion. So this is a complete debacle and failure of our political process. We don't have a representative institution. The American people are against what's happening in Ukraine. They're against what's happening in Gaza. Does anybody care? Not the White House, not the senators that are pushing endlessly for this money. It's absolutely amazing to me, knowing these people, how irresponsible they are. Here's President Biden yesterday telling the Republicans history is watching them and the failure to come up with the $60 billion is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants. This bipartisan agreement also provides Israel with what it needs to protect its people and defend itself against Hamas terrorists. And it will provide the necessary life-saving

humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people. By opposing this bill, they're denying aid to the people who are really suffering and desperately need help. You know, there's more work to get this done over the finish line, and I want to be clear. Doing nothing is not an option. Republicans have to decide. For years, they said they want to secure the border. Now they have the strongest border bill this country has ever seen. It's grotesque, by the way, grotesque to call this a bill for the Palestinian people.

Just grotesque. This is a bill to kill the Palestinian people. This is a bill to back Netanyahu stating today only total victory. This is a deal of complicity in these alleged genocidal acts. And for Biden to say that this is denying support for the Palestinian people, come on, this is what we have descended to in this country. It's not even childish. That's an insult to children. This is absolutely nonsensical to hear this kind of statement. And by the way, when it comes to Ukraine, just to say Biden is so deeply implicated in this debacle because it was Biden, Newland, Blinken, Sullivan, the same team of four that were part of the handiwork of the coup in February 2014, the one that's caught on tape, Victoria Newland talking to U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Piat. Boy, they're all still in power, including Piat in the State Department, Nuland promoted in the State Department, Nuland just last week in Kiev. There's no accountability.

They don't want to admit what a disaster they created, so they just want more money in to postpone any kind of reckoning, except the reckoning is that Ukrainians are getting killed massively and nothing is being done to protect Ukraine. All of this makes the situation for Ukraine even worse. This will raise your blood pressure even more. Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier today, nighttime in Israel, saying all objectives of the war will be won in a couple of months. Number 18, Chris.

I came here this evening to say we are on our way to that decisive victory. It is in our hands. It's not a matter of perhaps weeks, but it is in a matter of months. The IDF are working systematically, and they will achieve all the objectives of the war. They're going to release all the hostages, eliminate Hamas, and Gaza will no longer be a threat to Israel. Release all the hostages. Doesn't he recognize that 50 of the hostages are dead, killed by IDF bombings? This has nothing to do with the hostages.

It has very little to do with Hamas. He is leading the most extreme right-wing government in Israel's history. have said absolutely explicitly is that this is a war for Israeli domination over Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, over the Palestinian territories. This is a war of what they call greater Israel. That's the objective. And incidentally, it's not a secret. It's not hidden. This is why the International Court of Justice said the genocidal intent is all over the place. Just recently, one of the key ministers in the government, Vesal Smotrich, a self-described fascist, by the way, he called himself a fascist in one of the interviews. So what? He put out a plan which said, basically, okay, we either dominate the Palestinians that

stay or they leave or they fight and we kill them. But that's the options. And so this is what we are backing. And we don't hear a word about this in any public discussion, in any vote over aid, in any implication for America's standing in the world, its relations with the rest of the world, which stands aghast at what is happening while we stand alongside what is happening. We don't hear any debate, just can we get it through the Senate? Can we bludgeon these congressmen who admittedly nearly always vote for the military-industrial complex, so why not more? Right. Earlier, either this week or it may have been today, the Saudi Arabian government announced the conditions for its normalization with Israel. What did it say and what is your analysis of it?

Well, this is actually extremely important, what happened yesterday in the announcement of the Saudi government. The Saudis were extremely clear and extremely consistent, by the way, with their past declarations. They said there can be peace and normalization with Israel when there is a state of Palestine along the 1967 borders with the capital in East Jerusalem. That's all part of standard international law. When that happens, then there will be normal relations and there will be peace. And the Arab nations have been saying this for decades. The Arab nations have been saying there is a path to peace. It's straightforward, the two-state solution. Now, what makes yesterday's pronouncement

significant, however, is not the news, but the exposure of the incredible naivete and bankruptcy of U.S. policy. Because the whole approach of U.S. policy in recent years has been, we'll go with Israel, no state. Israel maintains control over millions of Palestinians. It doesn't matter. We can buy off the Saudis. We can buy off the Arab world. That's what the program has been. We'll get normalization. Don't worry about Palestine. Don't worry about these right-wingers. Let them do their thing. We'll still get normalization. And actually, our never accurate, never quite truthful White House spokesman John Kirby said recently, oh, we're very close to a deal with the Saudis on normalization of relations. And it was probably Kirby's statement

that led the Saudi government yesterday to say, wait a minute, here is our position. Let there be no doubt about it. We will normalize when Israel recognizes and accepts a state of Palestine as part of the two-state solution according to international law. The whole point of what's happening is that this extreme right-wing government at the core opposes that answer. The core of what this government wants is what they call greater Israel. It's not a secret. It is directly in view. There will be no peace and there will be no normalization with this approach of religious nationalist extremism in Israel. Our choice is something else. Our choice is do we provide the munitions every day for this slaughter going on?

Now Netanyahu says, oh, it's not a matter of weeks, it's a matter of months, but we'll get there. How much more slaughter is that? And Jake Sullivan's going to stand by every day and say, sure, we need to support this. And the president's going to stand at the podium and say, we need absolutely to give our ally Israel the financing for this war. How about the truth? How about the real situation?

How about the impossibility of peace? How about the loss of America's interest in the world when we stand with this extreme religious nationalist position that is absolutely opposed by the entire world, except for Israel and the United States? How about a moment discussion about that by our political system, our representative deliberative body. Not a word. Now, we don't have those kind of debates anymore. Professor Sachs, was there a conversation between the Israelis and the Saudis about normalization before October 7th, and was normalization proceeding? And if so, did October 7th

succeed in destroying that? This idea has been going on for years under Trump administration. This is Jared Kushner's idea. But by the way, in the U.S. politics, administration to administration, the Israeli lobby is so powerful and so dominant, doesn't really make much difference. This has been the gambit all along. Was it ever close? I really doubt it. Who knows? But I really doubt it. I don't think that October 7th changed this.

Hard to see the Arab world and the Saudis as ostensible leaders of the Arab world and the keepers of the holy sites. Hard to see them just completely abandoning the Palestinians, the millions of Palestinians to their fate. I never believed that that would happen, but that has been the U.S. gambit. It's the reason, by the way, that Jake Sullivan said in the days before October 7, the Middle East is quieter than it's ever been because they don't understand the real situation at all. And the cynicism is so deep that they believe their own cynicism. So, no, I don't believe that normalization was ever there because the Arab and Islamic leaders have been saying for years

that normalization requires the two-state solution. So the Saudis condemned Israeli aggression and slaughter in Gaza. Will they do more than just condemn it? I don't think any of the countries in the region, and I include Iran, I include Syria. I include Lebanon, Saudi Arabia. Nobody wants war. And Turkey. Nobody wants wider war right now. Nobody. Everybody's struggling, trying to figure out how just to keep a foothold in a very dangerous world. So the only ones that want a wider war are the Israelis, because they know that the situation as it is right now isn't working for them. They think if the United States swoops in and goes to war with Iran, maybe something good will happen for them. Of course,

it would be a complete disaster for the entire world. But I think the Israelis are the only ones that are, they're the ones also with the U.S. and the U.K. bombing, still making strikes in Syria. The U.S., of course, in Iraq, the Israeli defense forces keep talking about how they're going to invade Lebanon. And it's been Israeli policy for years to try to pull the U.S. into a war with Iran. So three American reservists from Georgia were asleep in their barracks at a godforsaken place called Tower 22, somewhere at the border between Jordan and Syria, when a drone hit and killed them and injured 37 others. President Biden has unleashed 85 attacks and punishment on sheds and warehouses and tribesmen and herdsmen and innocent civilians. And right before we came on air, CNN reported that the U.S.

sent a drone into the heart of Baghdad and killed a Hamas leader. Does Joe Biden want a wider war? What conceivable benefit is there to American national security to unleash 85 attacks on innocent civilians and on empty buildings? Why are our military forces there at all? Well, the ones in Iraq are there because of the disastrous lies that got us to launch a war in 2003 against Iraq on completely phony premises. Our forces are in Syria because Barack Obama signed a presidential finding for the CIA to engage in a covert regime change operation to overthrow the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. So we're there because of these disastrous foreign policy moves. Who has been accountable for any of that? Who even knows or talks about the real reasons for this? We don't have accountability because the ones that make these decisions aren't the ones dying.

And because the money keeps flowing to the military industrial complex. So in a way, it's a success. Look, we've been able to keep military bases in this region for 20 years. Wow, that's great. How much money has been spent? We have a nearly trillion dollar Pentagon budget and maybe 1.3, 1.4 trillion overall military budget. That's success from the point of view of these people. So the whole question, what our soldiers are doing, they're not, should we retaliate or

not retaliate? Why do we have these military bases in, as you said, these godforsaken places that are getting shelled for completely phony reasons, and the American people have never been leveled with about all of this? When Admiral Kirby was asked by what authority President Biden unleashed these 85 attacks, was there an authorization for the use of military force? There obviously wasn't any declaration of war. He said, well, he doesn't need any authority. This is in defense of our troops.

Well, that argument only makes legal sense if the troops are there lawfully. They are not in Iraq lawfully. They're not in Syria lawfully. They're not in Syria lawfully. You and I know that the whole question of any kind of legal responsibility for war was abandoned decades ago to our security state, to our secretive security state. We're not even sure whether it's the White House or the CIA or who does run anything because nobody tells the American people and there's no debate about it. Right. That's back to where what you were saying before. Here's somebody running for president of the United States who makes perhaps the most outlandish statement I've heard,

even more outlandish than what Joe Biden has said. The Palestinian people are arguably the most pampered people in the world. Watch this. Cut number two, Chris. Netanyahu and his government have said absolutely no. They built up Hamas to try to thwart any sort of Palestinian statehood. I'm not defending Netanyahu. And I don't co-sign with Netanyahu and Likud, though. Israel is a divided country. 20% of the population were on the street demonstrating against Netanyahu.

What I'm saying is the Israeli Hamas is a criminal enterprise. The Palestinian, and you talk about solutions for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people are arguably the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the history of the world. Are you kidding me? I suppose that's the best response you could say to that nonsense, are you kidding me? And I don't mean to demean you and your intellect by asking you to respond to that,

but I thought while your blood pressure was up, I would drop that one on you. I'm trying to tell Robert Kennedy Jr. every day that what he says about Ukraine, which is no more war, no more aid, diplomacy applies in the Middle East as well. And I'll keep trying to make that point. Okay. Professor Sachs, thanks very much. Thanks for your time. As always, I know you're traveling all over the world. We caught you in New York for the five minutes that you're there. But you and I will be together soon in the Vatican. We haven't announced that officially, but we will be there for an academic conference on Thomas Aquinas and natural rights. But before that, we'll see you again from where we are next week at this time. See you next week.

Thank you, Professor Sachs. All the best. Bye bye. Bye. Coming up tomorrow, Tony Schaefer, Mark Anzalone, Professor Mearsheimer, and the inimitable Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thanks for watching!