Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Congress Funding Death in Gaza and Ukraine

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Congress Funding Death in Gaza and UkraineSee 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 Monday, April 22nd, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us now. Professor Sachs, before we talk about the vote in the United States Congress to send $61 billion to the military-industrial complex and President Zelensky's response to it, and before we talk about what's happening on the Columbia University campus where you're a tenured professor, what happened at the Security Council since we last spoke? What opportunities were missed there with respect to the salvation of the Palestinian people? Well, Judge, good to be with you. The whole world, except for the United States and Israel, believes that we need to move now to two states living side by side, Israel and Palestine, with no doubt a wall between them at the start. This is not a happy relationship, but it doesn't have to be a site of bloodshed

either. So in 2011, Palestine, which is already recognized as a state by 140 UN member states, though not by the United States, applied for full UN membership as what would be now the 194th UN member state. And when you make that application, it goes to the Security Council after clearing one step with the Secretary General of the UN, then the Security Council meeting as an admissions committee, not formally as the Security Council, but it's the same members, decide whether the criteria are met for UN membership. After that, if the answer is decided to be yes, as a yes, then it is forwarded to the UN Security Council for a vote. And if the Security Council approves, then it goes to the UN General Assembly. In 2011, at the technical level, the decision was that Palestine qualifies as a member state. And it would have gone forward, but for the United States,

which at that point leaned on the Palestinian authority and said, don't do it right now. It's not convenient, but it'll come very soon. Just accept observer status for the moment. That'll let you in the building. But don't press for full membership. You'll get there very soon. The United States gave assurances that this was just a short adjustment period. That, of course, was 13 years ago. The U.S. and Israel blocked it all that time. When the violence broke out on October 7th with the Hamas attack, and then after that, the Israeli invasion of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority said, we cannot have peace unless we can have our state and our sovereignty for our people.

And so they reactivated the application. It wasn't a new application. It was the application that was in suspension because of the United States. When they reactivated all over the world, government said, of course, of course, this is what is needed. And I had discussions with many senior diplomats, with foreign ministers, with heads of state about this, who believe that, of course, this is the way to end this conflict, that there should be two states, they should live in mutual security, that the United Nations should ensure that they're not at each other's throats when they are both side by side. Incidentally, Palestine would join under the UN Charter as a, quote, peace-loving state. It could not join as a state determined to bring an end to Israel.

And the Arab and Islamic countries have made clear now since the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, so for more than 20 years, that in the event of a two-state settlement, there would be normalization of diplomatic relations across the region with Israel. This would be the core of Israel's security, an end of state of war, an end of funding of military or militia that are in opposition to Israel and so forth. In other words, diplomacy, because a solution would have been reached. So the vote came to the Security Council last week with an overwhelming support, except as usual, one country stood in the way of the global will. Technically two. Israel, of course, this government opposes it. It wants ownership over all of the territory, both of Israel and of Palestine. That is the core reason for this conflict. Israel's demands that are, in my view, absolutely incompatible with peace and with justice.

But the second obstacle is the United States, which has given essentially a blank check to Israel. And so when the vote came, it was absolutely remarkable. 12 countries out of the 15 voted for, two abstained because the UK will never vote against the United States. And Switzerland was the second one leaned on by the U.S., and then the U.S. vetoed this measure. Now, this proposition will go to the U.N. General Assembly, which has the jurisdiction to take up an issue when there is a deadlock in the Security Council. There will be a vote in the UN General Assembly sometime in the coming weeks on Palestine's membership. It will be overwhelming, but it will be advisory. It will show that the will of the world overwhelmingly is for two states living side by side. When the General Assembly takes that action, it will go back to the UN Security Council. Of course, the United States is absolutely

preventing a solution right now. That has essentially been true for years and decades, I would say. The U.S. is not an honest broker. It is a completely dishonest broker in this affair. Israel controls U.S. policy in this regard. The U.S. is completely subservient, despite this not being in America's interest at all. America is diplomatically isolated. It is on the wrong side of history. As we say, it is on the wrong side of justice. It is playing with fire because we are every day in that tinderbox away from a general war in the Middle East. The U.S. is pumping in billions, tens of billions of dollars that we can ill afford and that is no substitute for peace. And that vote of another 26 billion, depending on which parts you put in for Israel, was just made last Saturday with no strings attached by the U.S. Congress, because basically U.S. policy is run by the Israel lobby in this regard.

Before we get to the Congress, here's Secretary Blinken attempting to answer a very astute question. Was the United States isolated at the UN? On the UN Security Council, the United States was isolated yesterday. Your allies, close allies, France, Japan, and South Korea, both voted for admitting Palestine as a member. The Israelis, including Netanyahu, under it, were saying they opposed the solution. So what is the path forward, and what message can we United States is committed to achieving a Palestinian state. We believe that that is vital to having long-term, sustainable, durable peace and security. And, of course, it's the only way to fulfill the aspirations,

the rightful aspirations of the Palestinian people. But getting to that, achieving that state, has to be done through diplomacy, not through imposition. And the resolution that was voted at the Security Council will have no effect on actually moving things forward. What is he talking about? The United States is committed to achieving a Palestinian state. This was not done through diplomacy. Does the man know what he's talking about? Well, to be charitable to him, it's an idiotic statement. To be uncharitable, it is an utterly deceitful

statement. I don't know with Blinken which it is. It's sheer, complete foolishness. And it's deadly. It's literally deadly to the Palestinian people. It is extremely dangerous. If he wants to have diplomacy, I can give him some good advice, even friendly advice. I talk to diplomats every day. Apparently, he does not in the same East. They are ready for peace. They are ready for Israel's security. What he means is something else, which is that Israel gets a veto on Palestine's right to political self-determination. There's no principle for that, but that's what he's saying. He's saying that Israel gets to veto Palestine's right to self-determination. When that issue came up in the General Assembly several weeks's out of 193, to vote against Palestine's right to self-determination. Which were the four? The four were Israel, the United States, Micronesia, which is an island. Don't we own Micronesia? Well, Micronesia has a compact with the United States that it must vote alongside the U.S.

So it's 110,000 people in the Pacific. And the fourth was a very nice little island named Nauru with 12,000 people. Honestly, the United States is completely isolated. The problem with what Blinken says is that it reflects the astounding arrogance of the United States not to hear anything of the rest of the world and to make these utterances, which are meaningless, self-contradictory, inimical to solutions, and to believe that this is a way that grownups would talk. He is our chief diplomat, but he clearly does not understand the first thing about diplomacy in this response. There's every capacity to have a diplomatic solution to this crisis, except if the United States says we take

no judgment other than what Israel wants. Because what this government of Israel wants is to deny Palestine anything. And if all we say is diplomacy comes down not to the 8 billion people around the world and the 192 other governments, but only to what one government, Israel, says, that's not diplomacy. That's recklessness. How dangerous, how reckless, to pick up on your word, was the vote in the House of Representatives to send, again, depending upon the number, $13, $20, or $26 billion to Israel and $61 billion to Ukraine, knowing that the latter doesn't go to Ukraine, the lion's share of it stays here. But it's sort of unleashed a false sense of euphoria amongst President Zelensky and his people. But I'll let you address it. How dangerous was that vote? Well, what it means is more deaths and more killing and no solutions. For Ukraine, it's a profoundly cynical action to extend Ukraine on the battlefield with the thousands and thousands of deaths every month to extend this past the November election.

It's nothing more than that. But it is how our military industrial state operates. The CIA gave the briefing and the Congress fell into line because the CIA, believe me, is more powerful than the White House in this. This is the security state and it dictates and we're going to get past November one way or another. So this was a completely cynical and destructive action because it was irrational in that there was no coherent discussion of alternatives. Everything that Speaker Johnson had said for months about the need for a plan, the need for a strategy, the need for clear goals, everything was just put aside after he got his CIA briefing. And that was it. So totally irrational, and not even an attempt at how he could switch completely from one day to the next, which is what he did, except that both parties are subservient to the military industrial complex in this country, not to the American people who are opposed to this, not to the Republican Party,

which is overwhelmingly in opposition to this legislation that just passed with substantial Republican support, including support of the Republican Speaker of the House. When it comes to Israel, it is feeding a genocide. The International Court of Justice is likely to rule that Israel is committing genocide in the legal sense of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. And we are complicit in that absolutely explicitly. Incidentally, we had Senator Schumer talk about how miserable the Israeli government is. We had several members of Congress say, we need to put restrictions on this. There's horrible crimes, war crimes by Israel going on. None of that applied in the end. It's just giving munitions for more slaughter. This will upset you. Here's the scene on the floor of the House of Representatives at the time that the vote was tallied. Take a look at what appears to be in

the hands of most of the Republican members of the House as they cheered the announcement of the outcome of the vote. I missed it, but thank you. Okay. The House will be in order. The House will be in order. The Chair would remind my colleagues to observe proper decorum. Flag waving on the floor is not appropriate. The House will be in order. Without objection, a motion to reconsider is laid on the table. For what purpose does the gentleman from Florida rise? The gentlewoman from Florida.

The gentleman does not recognize colleagues. No, I'm going to... The House will be in order. Like children waving Ukrainian flags on the floor of the House. That was one of the Republicans that voted against it, who admonished everybody else to, quote, put the damn flags away. And then he took the microphone away from her. You're once reminded to forgive them they know not what they do yeah what they're what they're what they're doing is sending tens of thousands maybe hundreds

of thousands more young ukrainians to their death that's what they're doing because they are absolutely unaware of any of the real issues in this conflict unaware of its genesis unaware of any of the real issues in this conflict, unaware of its genesis, unaware of its possible resolution. All they seem to know is war. And they're ignorant. They don't study this. They don't look at alternatives. They don't say one word about diplomacy. They know nothing. They don't understand the consequences. It's regrettable how really sad our government has devolved into almost this ludicrous display of irrationality and immaturity, because that's what this is. This wasn't a considered discussion, a considered deliberation taken after a careful reflection of the myriad possibilities, alternative approaches, and likely consequences. This is kind of an ignorant mob waving their flags that has already condemned around 500,000 Ukrainians to their deaths or

grave wounds, that has lost a great deal of territory, not because Putin was out to take the territory, but because the United States at every stage refused basic diplomacy over the issue of the U.S. placing its military along the Russian border. That's the issue we've never discussed. That's the issue that the New York Times will not tell it some thumb sucking readers, excuse me, because they can't read that thing as adults, that New York Times. It has no facts. And that's what leads us to this kind of display in Congress. We are in the grips of phoniness and irrationality. We're not considering alternatives. We're not discussing, honestly, any of the dynamics of these conflicts. We're not discussing where they came from and how they can be ended. It's a game. It's a small insider game. In the end, the Congress buckles in to the campaign contributions of Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics and Boeing and the Israel lobby and all the rest. All these people know is that they got to get out back to their home districts and with

the funding for their advertisements so that they can do more damage as reelected representatives after November. We're in a trap. We're in a trap of utter irrationality. Nothing's explained to the American people. No truth underpins any of these decisions. Nobody wants to debate it. The president of the United States, I'm sure, could not debate this. No, no. And there was no serious debate on the floor of the House. Yes. And excuse me, just to say that the fact that the Speaker of the House could be against don't count and as if it's not, just as if it's not serious at all. The same Speaker of the House was against warrantless spying, against warrantless spying, against warrantless spying, and the CIA visited him, he changed his mind.

The vote in the House of Representatives was 2-12 in favor, 2-12 against. The simple amendment to require the intelligence community and the FBI to get a warrant when they want to spy on Americans. He left the Speaker chair to come down to the well of the House and break the tie and vote against that amendment. So whatever the CIA tells the Speaker of the House in secret, boy, I'd like to know what it is, because they get this guy to flip on the most significant issues of our day, the Constitution and human life, war and peace.

Without need for any coherent explanation after the fact at all. Right. That's the game. Was a professor, I think you may know her, but was an academic arrested in Israel for something said in a classroom and then the courts released her the following day? Do I have this correct? Yes. I don't know all the details, but there was a professor of Hebrew University arrested for not towing the line on Israel's unacceptable, in my view, positions vis-a-vis Palestine. But what's happening now is we're

seeing a general crackdown across universities. What is happening at Columbia, where you are a tenured member of the faculty? A hundred students were arrested for basically quietly protesting on the lawn at the university. And the president of the university called in the police and a hundred students were taken away in zip cuffs, and it's completely broken the community apart. Yale students, several dozen, were arrested in the last 24 hours, from what I understand. The idea that universities should be places of crackdown and that speech, if you don't like it, that's a kind of harassment that should be shut down. This is what we have come to. Because these positions that the U.S. government is taking or that Israel is taking are not defensible, by the way, in normal debate and discourse. So opposition to them is met increasingly violently by the arrest of our own students.

It's shocking to see, except that this is what has become the American political scene. This happened the day after the president of Columbia University appeared before a House committee known for berating university presidents and threatening that the millions of dollars that the federal government gives for legitimate academic research would be restricted if the federal government's view, if the Biden administration's view, although in this case, the interrogators were Republicans, they're hardly in the Biden administration. Let's just say in Washington's view, because it's the Congress and the White House. Correct. If Washington's view, if in Washington's view, the speech was contrary to what Washington wanted to hear. Haven't they remembered that they took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,

which includes the First Amendment? And the last time you and I read it, it said, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech? No, they don't recall that. They don't believe it. They are utterly irresponsible and opportunistic. The decision to arrest the students was taken not the day after, it was taken the same day as the president's testimony that evening. It was taken without consultation with the students, without an attempt at a face-to-face discussion. It was not taken in response to violence. It was the New York Police Department coming onto the campus and arresting students that were sitting on the lawn or in tents. Whatever the law,

and I think it violated the law, I can tell you it broke the community in two because universities have an ethos. The ethos is that they are a community. They're a place where you study, where you debate, you can argue, but it's a place of thinking. And thinking can be tough. It can be very hard debate. You can hear things you don't want to hear. That's part of life. These people want to take a category of speech and say it is unprotected. The government can go after you for that category of speech.

They can call it hate speech, dangerous speech, whatever they want to call it. That's why all speech is protected, particularly in an environment dedicated to the dissemination of unpopular ideas. But the kind of speech that, you know, the most famous attack was on the chant or the saying or the slogan, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Now, the river is the Jordan River, the sea is the Mediterranean, And it is a chant for Palestinian rights.

It could be a claim for one state. It could be many things. But what it surely is, is political speech. And that's extremely important. In fact, the irony of this is, of course, the extremist Israeli leaders use exactly the same phrase. They also talk about from the river to the sea, there will be greater Israel. So there's a symmetry. On one side, it should be all Palestinian. On the other side, it should be all Israel. I happen to disagree with both sides, but I don't think that it's right to arrest people for saying this from either side. That's the idea of political

debate. It's also not right to be bombing people because you're trying to create a greater Israel. So there are limits. The limits are the bombs, the mass killings, the 35,000 people dead at Israel's hand by the current count, but it's expected that the actual count is multiples of that because there are people under the rubble. There are people who are starving to death. There are people who are dying of disease. There are people who are dying of lack of medical care because the hospitals have been bombed out. That's what should be prohibited. Not even heated speech. Heated speech is not calling to attack a student or not. That kind of assault is not permitted. But the charge that the congressional members made was directly, explicitly about political speech in a context where we need political debate. We need more political debate, not less of it. Here's a congressman from New York. I couldn't believe I was seeing this. The last clip we'll play for you because I know this will

get under your skin also. Offering a resolution, condemning the phrase. I never heard of this fellow, Congressman Anthony Desposito, but watch this. My resolution condemns the slogan, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Because it is blatantly anti-Semitic. Madam Speaker, I remind my colleagues that this slogan was used by Iranian leaders responsible for the recent attacks on Israel. This slogan communicates one thing and one thing only. It is not human rights. It is certainly not peace. It is the violent destruction of the state of Israel and the Jewish people that live within it.

To employ this slogan is to perpetuate the cause of hate and regional instability. Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea sits Israel, a free, diverse nation, a safe haven for Jewish people, formed in the wake of the mass murder of European Jews. When the world witnessed the tragedies of the Holocaust, we said never again. Now is our chance to mean it and to reject anti-Semitic hate in all of its forms, whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head. I don't know if they actually voted on this resolution. It's reprehensible

that Congress should think it even can be in the business of condemning speech, no matter what the speech says. Hate speech. By the way, it's so interesting, so sad, so primitive. Here's a representative. He says, in between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean lies Israel. If he had said, in between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean lies Israel and Palestine, well, then we would have the start of the discussion that the whole rest of the world is having between the river and the sea. There are two peoples and two nations. And the Palestinian nation, Palestinian state already recognized by 140 UN member states. But he doesn't say that. And it's meaningful that he doesn't say that.

He's ignorant, I'm sure, about from the river to the sea, maybe wanting one state, which many people, by the other side are Israeli leaders who use the same expression, from the river to the sea, for greater Israel. And they're not just chanting it. They are killing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Palestinians right now before our eyes to achieve their aim. That's a difference. And this congressman just voted more money for that, for the killing. So he doesn't see the irony that a slogan used by both sides to mean the opposite in each direction, he's condemning one side, not the other, while the other side is slaughtering the counterpart. Slaughtering, and not just slaughtering the counterpart, killing one child every 10 minutes in Gaza at the latest count, every 10 minutes. But with this

congressman's vote, his approval, his vote for the munitions to do that slaughter. So he's complaining about speech, but he's complicit in mass murder. Good for him. How intelligent. This is our Congress. It's astounding. Well, we saw the same mob mentality with the waving of the Ukrainian flag. By the way, that vote, as I may have said earlier, preceded no meaningful debate at all. Professor Sachs, thank you very much. I know this stuff gets a little emotional and under our skin, but I appreciate so much your deep, granular analysis and your fearless articulation of these views of the values of peace and personal freedom. Thank you, Jeff. Well, I thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to discuss these issues because if we continue to be so irrational, so violent, so militaristic, we're going to blow

up the world. So we had better discuss these things before we do. Yes. We'll see you again soon. All the best. Thank you. Of course. Bye-bye. Bye. Coming up at 4.30 this afternoon on all of these same matters, the inimitable Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll be you next time. start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.