Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: How Israel is harming itself.

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: How Israel is harming itself. 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 Wednesday, November 1st, 2023. Our good friend, Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us today from Rome. Professor Sachs, welcome back to the show. Thank you for taking the time to do this on your hectic travel schedule. You recently wrote, Professor Sachs, that Israel is running out of time to save itself. What did you mean by that? Every day that we see this bloodshed, this carnage in Gaza, and we have new cases of mass destruction just now and being played on video all over the world, Israel is isolating itself from the global conscience, from the world community, from normal politics, and I would say from basic ethics. Yes, Israel needs security, but it is not going to find security by killing thousands or tens of thousands of innocents, especially its children and women who are dying right now. And Israel's not thinking, or they are thinking, I should say,

but they're thinking in a way which is only about power and force and not about peaceful solutions that would bolster their security, that would strengthen their place in the world, that would enable a real peace to take hold. They're only thinking of the fist coming down and it won't work. They're going to lose not only a lot of young Israelis who will die in Gaza, and we have the numbers starting, and thousands or tens of thousands of innocent deaths of civilians, but they're going to find the whole world united against Israel, and that fundamentally will undermine their security. They don't get it. They're not listening. Of course, they are led by the most divisive political figure that Israel has ever had, who was already bringing hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets in protest against

his government before any of this October and November events even started, and who let the guard down, left Israel, I should say, vulnerable to this horrific terrorist attack, and now probably in the quest to somehow save his political life, which is over, actually, unquestionably over, but to somehow save his political life. Netanyahu is undertaking this massively wrongly conceived and disastrous response. embrace the view, perhaps internally, within himself, that he only stays as prime minister for as long as the war rages, that the Israelis will not change governments in the middle of a war, a serious war, and that therefore he has a vested personal interest in the war going on and on and on, so he stays in power. Am I wrong to even suggest such an ignoble motivation on his part? Well, I think his motivation in some sense is to be still the savior of Israel in its security. That's been the guise that he has always played for himself.

Important word is guise. Yes, because, look, he divided the country so much. He actually left Israel so vulnerable that an attack that actually should never have been permitted by normal security and intelligence operations occurred. letting its guard down, but that was after months of internal civil unrest stoked by the most divisive government that Israel has ever had in its existence. So I don't know whether he wants perpetual war or he wants to crush Hamas and show that therefore he has saved Israel, whether it's perpetual war or a decisive victory, I don't know. But it is his self-delusional idea that he remains Israel's indispensable leader, and he's going to prove it. But what he's doing is creating an absolute disaster for Israel that could prove devastating in many, many ways, absolutely in many ways. But one of the ways that it will be devastating in days is that the world is aghast at what Israel is doing. Israel essentially has one backer, but not even necessarily for long, and that is the

United States, because Israel knows that it's acting and can act only with the U.S. at its back. But even in the United States, to count on this absolutely unconditional public support or to follow our government in saying explicitly, not implicitly, not implied, not whispered, but explicitly, there are no red lines on Israel. I, no matter how many civilian deaths, no much, no matter how much disaster. That was actually the explicit statement by our government that there are no red lines. Well, the rest of the world doesn't buy it. And not just the Muslim world, which is huge and important and a significant part of the world population, but the rest of the world too. Nobody supports this kind of carnage of a civilian population. Is this carnage of a civilian population likely to invite a military response from other parts of the world?

I think so, because there are so many armed paramilitaries. There are so many roving jihadist forces in the region. There are so many Muslim governments around that, because of their own public pressures, can't simply sit back and have unfold what is now unfolding. Even leaders like Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, who is a very important and significant figure in the world, a member of NATO with a vast army, has been speaking absolutely bluntly, forcefully, and I think understandably from his political and moral and religious point of view, that what is happening is completely unacceptable. And when you have someone like Erdogan, who is, again, part of NATO, taking such a strong position, of course, this is not to mention Iran. This is not to mention jihadists all over Syria, over in Yemen, in other neighborhoods, in Lebanon, of course.

The chance for sparks to set a mass wildfire, and then with the American troops, no doubt, or American targets going to be hit. And then we're going to hear in the U.S. voices, we've already had them with Lindsey Graham and other hotheads who always want more war in the U.S. Congress saying, well, now we have to go bomb Iran. And who knows where this leads, but it's not good. Can the United States either get Prime Minister Netanyahu to dial it back, call a ceasefire, exchange the hostages for the Palestinian prisoners that they have and work something out? Or can the United States by other means save Israel from itself? The United States can do it, but not by itself.

The United States can do it in conjunction with actually the Arab League, with Erdogan and Turkey, with a broader world community. The United States is essentially almost isolated in the world, as we can see watching day by day in the United Nations deliberations. So in the United Nations Security Council, there have been several resolutions now, and the United States is essentially the lone voice against even a humanitarian ceasefire, much less a more general ceasefire. A humanitarian ceasefire means stopping the fighting to allow for humanitarian relief. There are calls, of course, for a general ceasefire, but even for a humanitarian ceasefire, the United States has stood essentially alone.

What conceivable argument could the Biden administration make for opposing a humanitarian ceasefire when at the same time he's calling for humanitarian aid? The basic point that is hammered into every politician's head in Washington for decades is never show any space between the United States and Israel. And every politician is on a rote pattern to believe that. And every political advisor emphasizes, don't ever raise a question mark. Don't ever raise a moment of hesitation. You will be attacked. You will be attacked by large Jewish donors. You will be attacked by Christian fundamentalist donors. You will be attacked by interest groups. between the United States and any Israeli government. So it's not that they love what's going on. It's that the politicians are trained, absolutely trained by habit, trained by circumstance, trained by experience, trained by their advisors. Don't question anything that. That's actually the main role of a president of the United States,

is to not have us slip into disasters. And right now, we don't have leadership. We have our spokesman doing the normal politics, which is Israel has no red lines, and it's led by Netanyahu. And when you tell Netanyahu no red lines, oh, my God, because even if you told him red lines, it might not matter the first 10 times he hears it. I have a friend and colleague who's a libertarian like I am,

Tom Woods, who has a funny one-liner. No matter who you elect for president, you end up with John McCain. I mean, it's the same attitude over and over again with respect to Israel. Does the Israeli government believe that all men are created equal? The Israeli government believes that it, for any number of reasons which may vary among the government officials, believe that Israel must control all of Israel and all of the Palestinian territories. For some people, this is a deeply religious view, because if you read the book of Joshua, that is the fundamentalist interpretation, that all of this land is intrinsically Jewish land given by God. That is one motivating view

for some people. Another motivating view is that Israel's security depends entirely on control, and so there can be no peaceful compromise. And that view also goes back many, many decades. And there is yet a deeper and another tradition, which is a very practical one that is a century old since the founding of the Jewish homeland after the Balfour Declaration. And that is take what you can and don't give it back. And this has been a pragmatic approach. I remember also watching it personally and visiting Israel already 50 years ago this year. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the plan was start putting settlers in. And the phrase repeated thousands of times was put facts on the ground. Make it so that the land can never go back. Well, as you know very well,

there are now more than 400,000 Israeli settlers in occupied territories and 200,000 more in East Jerusalem. So more than 600,000 Israelis living in what the United Nations, no matter what the world says, no matter what our ground realities tell us, we will control everything. And de facto, what that means is an apartheid state. All right. So they don't believe that all men are created equal. They don't believe that the Arabs have the same natural human rights as the Jewish people. Well, they don't put any sense of equality into operation, let's put it that way. I don't know what they believe about that in religious or philosophical terms, but what they believe in operational political terms is that Israel rules and the others essentially don't have political rights.

Can Israel defeat Hamas? Israel cannot defeat Hamas other than through massive war crimes and the destruction of a civilian population. Can Israel defeat Hamas? We should ask, of course, Colonel McGregor, who knows much more about the military than I do. Well, my military guys tell me to ask you. My military guys are saying Israel cannot defeat Hamas because it is an idea. Well, yes, what I would say is the following. Israel could flatten Gaza and kill tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.

It could displace essentially more than two million people. It probably could do that. It would do that in the face of worldwide horror and provocation, and a wider war would ensue. And even if somehow Israel were to defeat Hamas, I think it's pretty clear a few points. One, even the direct military costs would be phenomenally large. A second major point is that it would come only in the context of massive war crimes by Israel. Third, it would come only in the context of massive and absolutely critical geopolitical isolation of Israel, because this would be a horrific set of events, all watched and documented meticulously hour by hour and day to day. And it would come with a very high possibility of a regional war that would be extraordinarily dangerous for everybody. So if you ask me, could it be done?

Probably technically, yes. But at costs that are so high and so dangerous, it's absolutely mind-boggling to think in those terms, especially since there isn't a scintilla of evidence that Israel has thought at all about this other than in these terms. They have one gear and that is the war gear. They don't have any diplomacy. They're obnoxious in their diplomacy. Let me say when they call on the Secretary General of the United Nations to resign after making a very balanced, judicious, wise, humanitarian appeal. So this is the point. They're not thinking.

And they think that they will be able to do something that they absolutely cannot do, which is to make more security for themselves this way. Recently, the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, made some rather off-the-wall comments in testimony before, I believe, a Senate committee saying that fighting against Hamas are helping the Israelis to fight against Hamas and helping Ukrainians to fight against the Russians. It's tough for me to say this with a straight face, somehow sends a message to China. And we're doing this to send a message to China. Do you have any idea what he's talking about? It's so off the wall, but I understand what he's talking about. I understand that they're off the wall.

They are so confused. They want to be tough to China. So being tough to China apparently means killing people right and left or engaging in a losing war in Ukraine that is leaving hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dead. They're very confused people. They have a wrong idea of the world. They have an absolutely wrong idea of China. The Chinese cannot figure this out, by the way. The Chinese are very sophisticated. I was just in Beijing. I talk regularly with the Chinese foreign policy officials.

They cannot figure out what are they talking about. The they of whom you speak is the Biden foreign policy establishment. Essentially, yes. I mean, it's the prevailing, but it's also the broader political class in Congress as well. So it probably extends beyond the White House, but they're absolutely dumbfounded by this. It's so lacking coherence, professionalism, ideas, concepts, reality. And it's sad to see Blinken talk like this. It's a nonsense. But I can only tell you, Judge, I hear it from others in Washington also. They've completely lost the melody. They don't get it at all. And what's weird about this, by the way, is that at the same

time, they're trying to improve diplomacy with China because they're trying to get ready for a Biden-Xi summit around the APEC meetings at the end of November. and then Blinken comes out and says yes we need this uh war against Gaza and the Ukraine war to show how tough we are to China and that's really going to impress the Chinese the Chinese are looking at this in amazement as the U.S basically goes over the edge in disasters isolating itself from the rest of the world. I didn't get a chance to say in the Security Council, there was this humanitarian resolution and the United States was the sole veto. It was 12 votes in favor, the United States vetoing two abstentions, Russia and the UK. Russia vetoing because they wanted a full ceasefire, not just a humanitarian ceasefire.

But the United States stands alone in saying not even a humanitarian ceasefire. And then the world's watching this. And to think that China's quaking, you know, quaking in its boots because of this complete confusion is both a nonsense and so profoundly wrongheaded. But we do have other senators of Blumenthal, of Connecticut, Mitt Romney said the same thing. You know, this is showing how tough we are to China. They were talking not about Israel, they were talking about the war in Ukraine. And maybe they don't get it, but the Ukrainians really are running out of people, out of people, not just out of artillery, out of people, because hundreds of thousands have died. And maybe a hundred thousand since June, since this U.S.-pushed counteroffensive for nothing. And that's showing how tough we are. There's a piece in Time magazine this week, you probably saw it.

I don't know if Time is a magazine anymore, if it's just online, saying that Zelensky's own people feel he's delusional. Yes, because basically he bought in, in March 2022, to the U.S. delusion. He put his whole everything, his country on the line, his personal conditions on the line for a U.S. delusion. Because the fact, as we've discussed, is that in March 2022, the Ukrainians and Russians were close to an agreement based on Ukrainian neutrality. And the United States swooped in and said, don't do that. We've got your back. That's when Biden said, for God's sake, this man cannot remain in power, referring to

Putin. And our Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, said our purpose is to weaken Russia. And we put the Ukrainians on a path of self-destruction because of this. Prime Minister Netanyahu should take note if he expects the United States to save Israel because the United States claimed it was saving Ukraine and we have facilitated and almost paid for its destruction. Judge, you know one of Kissinger's most famous lines, that to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. And what we're watching is when the United States says, we have your back, my God, you better be worried. Because this kind of approach of the U.S., especially in the last 30 years, the period when Biden referred to the indispensable nation

and all this delusion, it's exactly this that has led the United States to think we have our way on anything. And other countries that depend on the United States believe or have believed that this all powerful nation that has its way on everything will protect them. in Ukraine and what is happening in Israel is showing how profoundly, profoundly dangerous it is not to have diplomacy, not to engage in problem solving, but instead to try to rely on force and to believe that the United States through force can absolve a country of the responsibilities of decency and international law and diplomacy and cooperation, and they can't. There is no magic anti-gravity to avoid realities, and this is what Ukraine and Israel are going to find out the hard way. I'm very sorry to say. Professor Sachs, thank you very much. Thanks for taking time out of your work in Europe to join us.

Very enlightening, profound. We'll see you next week. Absolutely. Great to be with you. Safe travels, my friend. Thank you. More as we get it. Colonel Tony Schaefer at 11 o'clock eastern judge napolitano for judging freedom I'm out.