Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Israeli Extremists Prevail

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Israeli Extremists PrevailSee 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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Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. Thanks for watching! Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, September 30th, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs is with us now on what on earth, if anything, will stop Israel from its terrorism. But first this. A divisive presidential election is upon us and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70% and gold has increased by 60%. Do you own gold? I do.

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Protect your savings and retirement before it's too late. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. Remember, hope is not a strategy, but gold is. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, welcome here, my friend. Good to be with you. Thank you. From last Friday, from somewhere in New York City, either a hotel room or a consular office or an office inside the UN, Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the murder of a foreign leader, and within a few hours the murder was carried out. There were no consequences whatsoever.

In fact, the American government lauded him for doing this. Well, Israel is on an absolutely violent rampage. It's aiming to create a Mideast-wide war to draw the United States into that war. And the U.S. keeps saying yes. We have the weakest president imaginable, maybe not even functioning. But whatever Israel does, the U.S. government stands up and salutes. And it's extremely dangerous. It's contrary to America's national security. It's contrary to America's interests. And it's contrary to peace. But Israel maybe feels that in the weeks up to an election, it can do anything it wants with the U.S. military, in effect, because the U.S. is providing all of the weaponry. It's providing the intelligence. It's providing the green lights, the go-ahead, the financing, another $8 billion package last week. So basically Netanyahu is commander in chief of the U.S.

military in the Middle East, it seems for the moment, and he gets his way no matter how violent, how many people killed, how many opportunities for peace are lost. That's not the issue for Israel. The issue for Israel is to dominate the region. And since it has the U.S. military in its pocket, that's what it material in an effort to kill one man and a half dozen of his aides and succeeded in doing so. All of that financed by the American government. Well, the point is nobody in the U.S. counts the dead anywhere under American bombs. That's been true for decades. These people do not care about human life. And when there is mass slaughter, as there is in Gaza, as when there is hundreds or thousands killed in an attack aimed at one person as in central Lebanon, as there is under U.S. bombs in other parts of the world, in Yemen or in Iraq or in Syria. Truth doesn't matter.

Lives don't matter. They don't count the dead, not when it's not American dead. And I think they count American dead largely because it's bad publicity, bad for them. But for the others, no one's watching. No one cares. How significant is the death of Nasrallah? Was he just a figurehead, a spokesperson, a PR guy, a religious leader, or is this a significant setback for Hezbollah militarily? I ask that because as we speak, the New York Times is reporting that Israeli commandos have begun some sort of a ground incursion into southern Lebanon while the Israeli cabinet is meeting Monday night, Israeli time, to decide whether or not to engage in a full-fledged invasion, which they haven't done there since they got beat 20 years ago. Well, of course, I can't give you a completely authoritative answer on this, but from all I know, he was a very significant figure and an important leader.

And it was not just Nasrallah that was assassinated, but many other leaders in Hezbollah. And that followed last week's attack, which killed and wounded thousands with the Israeli terrorist attack because it killed absolutely innocent people, children, women, bystanders, shoppers, by the explosions of the pagers and other handheld devices and blinded many others. So this is clearly a real military setback in the short term. But the idea that Israel strikes a decisive blow and somehow is able to achieve its political objective, which is domination over all of Palestine, ethnic cleansing, whatever is needed to be the unquestioned dominant power will not work because there will be more resistance. There will be more arms. There will be more attacks on Israelis. There will be more missiles fired. And Israel's dominance, so-called, depends entirely on the United States. And as this war continues to escalate. The damage to the United States in security terms, in U.S. interests in the Middle East, and in the isolation of the U.S. diplomatically will continue to mount. In other words, Israel has tried for, basically for many decades, 60 years plus, even before the Six-Day War, to be that decisive, unquestioned, unchallengeable power.

It doesn't work and it's never going to survive in the end unless it learns to live together with the people of Palestine and with its neighbors. And this is precisely what Netanyahu doesn't want to do. He wants to crush them. And that is doomed to fail, whether it's next week, next month, next year, five years. the course that Israel is on is utterly self-destructive, but incredibly dangerous for all of us. Professor Sachs, what is the source, whether it's physical, ideological, philosophical, religious, what is the source of Israel's violence? The source is that there is no intention of a political solution in which Palestinians, who account for about half the

population of Israel plus the occupied lands of Palestine, to have political rights. So Israel's idea, Likud's idea, the party of Netanyahu, but even more of the partners who are really really so extreme, vulgar, that they are rightly tagged as genocidal. People like Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, who head parties that are right-wing, extremist, nationalist, religious nationalist religious movements. The idea is that Israel will control all of the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. It will dominate the Palestinians. It will do whatever it can to push out the millions of Palestinians who live there. Some will die under US bombs. Some will be ethnically cleansed if Israel gets its way. And the rest will certainly simply be suppressed. And Israel wants to be such a bully in the region that no one will dare to question or touch this dominance. That's the idea. And it's crystal clear. And the U.S. essentially funds and arms this idea, all the while mumbling, as Biden did in his

farewell address to the U.N. General Assembly, that Assembly, that the US supports a two-state solution. It's worse than pathetic, because what the US does is say, we back Israel no matter what, we'd like a two-state solution, but Israel is explicitly, completely, unequivocally opposed to a state of Palestine. So we have given Israel completely a blank check or a green light or whatever you want to call it to pursue its maximalist agenda. And the only way Israel can do that is with the U.S. military. But even there, this will get more and more dangerous, just as it has in Ukraine, because Iran is a major powerful country, although Israel's itching for the U.S. to go to war with Iran. And Iran has partners in the world as well, including Russia and other powerful countries that have nuclear weapons. So this is another part of the story of the US government bringing us ever closer to nuclear war, whether it's in Ukraine or whether it's in the Middle East or whether it's in China, where the U.S. is gearing up for war with China, as the Navy says, to be prepared for war by 2027.

We have a foreign policy which is making the U.S., the most powerful country in the world, profoundly unsafe and unsecure because the only thing, the only thing that threatens U.S. security is nuclear war. And yet we are stoking that risk precisely because of Israel's recklessness, because of Ukraine's recklessness, and because of our own recklessness, especially when it comes to East Asia. Does Israel recognize any international norms or authorities? No. Netanyahu came and he deprecated and scorned the United Nations. He shouted at everybody that they're anti-Semites. They brazenly and blatantly violate every international treaty, Geneva Convention, international standard. when the International Court of Justice rules that Israel's occupation is illegal, contrary to international law, the ruling from this July, Israel completely ignored it. And by the way, after a rigorous and detailed ruling by the International Court of Justice,

the General Assembly voted to support the implementation of legality of the international law according to the ICJ ruling. And who stood against that? The United States of America. We're not interested either in international law. We're just brazenly interested in whatever that part of our foreign policy decides. And since the part of our foreign policy in the Middle East is decided by Israel and the Israel lobby, and the American people have nothing to say about any of this, the U.S. has stood up and in the U.N. General Assembly said, we don't care about the International Court of Justice ruling at all. So there is no standard whatsoever that Israel will obey. And the language that the Israeli diplomats use at the UN is foul-mouthed and abusive. It's disgusting, actually. And I'm using harsh terms, but I've never seen, I've never seen of the other 192 countries behavior like the Israelis when they come to the General Assembly and yell at the rest of the nations of the world. But they wouldn't do it for one second if they didn't have the United States in their pocket.

And that is our failing. Right. Here is Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier today, I'm rolling my eyes, purporting to be addressing the Iranian people directly. I'd like your thoughts on this. Number 15, Chris. When Iran is finally free, and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think, everything will be different. Our two ancient peoples, the Jewish people and the Persian people, will finally be at peace. Our two countries, Israel and Iran, will be at peace. When that day comes, the terror network that the regime built in five continents will be bankrupt, dismantled. Iran will thrive as never before. Global investment,

massive tourism, brilliant technological innovation based on the tremendous talents that exist inside Iran. Doesn't that sound better than endless poverty, repression and war? Surely this can't be aimed at the people of Iran who would who would believe a word he said. Maybe it's aimed at at expats. But do you think he's predicting an invasion of Iran by saying this is going to happen sooner rather than later? It's breathtaking and it's breathtaking for a very particular reason. Iran elected a very peace-seeking president just a couple of months ago, President Pesshian. And I watched him at the UN all during the week. Every time he spoke, he spoke of peace. He spoke of ending the killings. Now, when Iran's new president was inaugurated, the inaugural gift of Israel was to assassinate the political leader and negotiator of Hamas during the president of Iran spoke last week,

and again, I saw him in person, I watched his speeches on video that I didn't see in person, this is a medical doctor who said he saves every life, whether it's a patient who might happen to be an enemy. It doesn't matter. His oath, his responsibility, his human moral code is to save that person. Well, this is a person who spoke repeatedly of wanting to restore relations with the West, wanting to return to a treaty that the U.S. walked out of, the U.S., not Iran, the JCPOA, wanting to find a way forward. What was Netanyahu's answer at the podium of the UN General Assembly? To speak hatred of Iran, to call Iran the ultimate evil, not to say with the new president, I sit down and we see if there is a way forward. Completely the opposite. They followed their inauguration

gift with the multiple further assassinations and now this war in Lebanon. In other words, Netanyahu does not want peace. He wants war. He wants war for Israel's unchallenged dominance. And the only way to have unchallenged dominance is to completely dominate people who do not want to be dominated by Israel and who have rights, legal rights, human rights, that Israel is violating. So Netanyahu's answer to a call for peace from Iran is precisely a call for war. What this new tape means, it just gives you the shivers. One can only guess, and I can't even guess. I'm seeing it for the first time this moment. But we should understand what is happening is precisely that Israel is escalating in part because Iran is seeking to make peace. And Israel doesn't want peace. It wants to defeat Iran. And it wants to show that

it is the completely unchallengeable power of the region that can do whatever it wants. It's devastating. Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu saying what you just so articulately and passionately summarized about Iran from the podium at the General Assembly as you know the audience was empty

but for the people that the Israeli consulate had brought in to applaud everything Netanyahu said cut number 11, Chris. I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran. If you strike us, we will strike you. There is no place, there is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that's true of the entire Middle East. Far from being lambs led to the slaughter, Israel's soldiers have fought back with incredible courage and with heroic sacrifice, and I have another message for this assembly

and for the world outside this hall. We are winning. I have a message for the long arm of Mr. Netanyahu, which is that it's the U.S. Air Force, it's the U.S. military, it's the U.S. Navy. It's not you, Netanyahu. It's the United States and you're dragging us into your wars, your wars so that you can dominate millions of Palestinian people and deny them their rights. It's not your long arm. It happens to be ours. The fact that the Israel lobby has manipulated our politics long enough is the reason you stand there and say that. But to say that precisely when the president of Iran has spoken exactly the opposite and called for peace,

rapprochement, reconciliation, that anyone can go online and look under the UN General Assembly, look it up on Google and type in the General Assembly and find the speech of the Iranian president and compare that with the speech of Netanyahu. You'll be very surprised who speaks about peace and who speaks about war and who brags because they have the U.S. military in their pocket. It's really amazing. And it's very dangerous. Here he is again, same speech, just this bombastic cut number 10. All the hostility directed at Israel this year, it's not about Gaza. It's about Israel.

It's always been about Israel. About Israel's very existence. And I say to you, until Israel, until the Jewish state is treated like other nations, until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce. Disagree with the Netanyahu administration? Every line a lie. Every line a lie. The Arab and Islamic states said in Riyadh last November, two states side by side, living in peace, security for both.

The Arab League said the same thing this spring in Bahrain. Two states living side by side in peace. Netanyahu doesn't want two states living side by side in peace. That's the bottom line that needs to be understood. Israel's not looking for security. It's looking to crush the foe. This isn't about finding a way to peace. This isn't about finding a way for two peoples to live peacefully side by side, which is what international law calls for and requires. This is about Israel dominating the entire region. And that's the big lie of all of this. This isn't about anti-Semitism. This isn't about Israel's security. This is about Israel, what they call greater Israel. And when Netanyahu showed a map as he stood there,

you could see it by the way, he showed a map of Israel with no Palestine on that map. The map pointed to Israel, which would be all of the territory from the Jordan to the sea. So Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan, all of that was shown as Israel on Netanyahu's map. That's the point. Why is the United States in that business, for heaven's sake, at risk of the whole world for that business, because some absolutely extremist, and many of them extremist religious fundamentalists, think that some 7th century BCE text promised them that land, and so they're going to keep it no matter whether the world goes to

war, no matter what happens to the United States or anyone else. Yes, that's the map. And if you look at the map that he's holding in the right hand that says the curse, if one gets close to that, it shows Israel as controlling all of the territory. This is the point. And that's what this is about. They're not looking for one moment at a political way out. And that long arm of Israel, again, yeah, that's the American Sixth Fleet. That's the American armaments that we ship every day. That's the American bombs. That's the American bombs. That's the American intelligence. That's the American satellites that are guiding Israel's bombs to their precise assassination addresses. Oh, come on. This is us. Why are we complicit in this to our own danger?

I think Chris has gotten a better view of the map. Well, it's obvious what you're talking about. And he has held up, yes, if you look carefully, you'll see it, Israel, and you'll see the arrow pointing it, and it is literally from the river to the sea. Exactly. You know, this is a, the students are getting attacked when they protest Israel for that statement. But that's Israel's complete plan is from the river to the sea. And the answer is there are two peoples, there are two lands, there's international law, there's the International Court of Justice. There are dozens of General Assembly and Security Council resolutions over the last 57 years.

None of it matters to Netanyahu and his gangsters. And why, oh why, oh why, oh why is the United States playing this game? Because of the donor class in the United States and its iron grip on the American government. And you look at, it's both Harris and Trump. They fall all over each other to say who's going to be more loyal to the Israel lobby. They compete. That's their main competition.

You're not loyal enough. I'm loyal. I'm going to do everything. They can have complete control over U.S. policy. Are there any negotiations for a ceasefire still going on with respect to Gaza? Or have the negotiators recognized that they've been duped because Netanyahu never wanted a ceasefire from the beginning? Israel kills the negotiators. Who are the negotiators? Haniyeh, he was killed. They don't want peace.

They're not looking for that. Yeah, they want a one-week or two-week ceasefire to get their hostages home so that Israel can resume the war. What they don't want is a permanent ceasefire. That would ruin everything, wouldn't it? If you're trying to win, and said we'll win it's very mature oh my word what a peace-loving man we'll win the long arm of israel we can reach anyone we can reach iran we can reach throughout the whole middle east what absolutely Absolutely, somebody should wake up in the United States and say, hey, we have a country, we have our own interests, we have policies,

and we have to judge what we have our military used for. Jeff, you're very eloquent and very passionate, like everybody else on this program, but we are a distinct minority in the United States. Look at what happened when Netanyahu was before Congress. They treated him like he was Douglas MacArthur in 1951. Yeah, you and I don't get our re-election funds from the Israel lobby. This is, you know, they stand up and cheer so that they can get more money pouring into their reelection campaigns. This is, and by the

way, Israel has basically, you know, the people in the government, I'm sorry to tell everybody, but this is really not thinking about U.S. interests. And that's why you hear the mumbling, which is literally mumbling. They know it's not in America's interest. They know that they can't speak straight to the American people about any of this. They don't want to tell the American people that our policy is run by Israel. They don't want to admit it, but they don't want to say it out loud either, because we're a few weeks before the election. And so Netanyahu, he's manipulating all of this, but it's incredibly dangerous. And I would say, Judge, that it's similar to Ukraine,

that we have a trillion dollar a-a-year military machine. And I wouldn't even say it's out for hire. We give it away to others for whatever strange purposes, because someone gets involved in some other country because of the lobbying. But we give away a trillion dollar military machine for, yeah, a few hundred million dollars of campaign contributions. It's a hell of a bargain they bought into. But how ridiculous and sad and dangerous for the United States. Professor Sachs, you're on fire. Much appreciated by the viewers and by your dear friend who is the host of this show. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you very much for everything you've

said and for all your passion and all your analysis. So clear and so forceful about what's going on. All the best to you. See you next week. Of course. Thank you. Coming up tomorrow at 12 noon, where has he been? Patrick Lancaster, live from the Donbass in Ukraine at 12 noon. At two o'clock, Matthew Ho. At three o'clock, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. And at five o'clock, it'll be midnight in Moscow, Pepe Escobar. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.