Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Netanyahu Now Afraid to Fly.

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Netanyahu Now Afraid to Fly.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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thinking about trying, or already there, we don't have to tell you that prioritizing yourself can be the hardest part. That's why we're helping you get started today with 30% off a three-month supply for a limited time at ritual.com slash podcast. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, January 14th, 2025. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us now. Professor Sachs, always a pleasure. My dear friend, no matter where you are in the world, you always seem to find time for this show and for the viewers who admire your work. You may very well have changed the course of history with your comment at the Cambridge Student Union a few months ago, which resonated with the president-elect who posted it, and which obviously had some kind of an effect. Prime Minister Netanyahu has declined to attend President Trump's inauguration. I don't know if he's afraid to fly, afraid to fly here,

afraid that his plane may have to land somewhere where he could be arrested. But clearly, the criticism that you leveled, so soundly accepted by so many people around the world, was embraced by the president and used as an elect and used as a negotiating technique. So now if there is a deal to release Israeli hostages and to release Palestinian hostages, Joe Biden will take credit and Donald Trump will take credit. I'm talking to the man who caused this to happen. No, but I would say that if there is a deal, by the way, it shows that there is leverage, that the United States doesn't have to follow the foreign policy of some other country. The United States can follow its own policy. If there is a deal, this is Donald Trump's

accomplishment. Joe Biden, I'm sorry to say, for years has just gone along with what other countries have told the U.S. to do. And this ceasefire should have happened a long time ago. If it comes, and it should come, it is coming through pressure that should have been applied a long time ago. This is a basic point. We've been discussing it not only about the war in the Middle East, but also the war in Ukraine. If you give your foreign policy, that is the United States foreign policy, to some other government to say, well, everything that we decide is going to be determined by the Ukrainians or it's going to be determined by the Israelis, believe me, we will not get what is in the interest of the United States. And by the way, we won't even get what is in the real interest of those other countries. We'll get what is in the interest perhaps of a few politicians in those other countries who suddenly have the U.S. at their beck and call.

But that doesn't mean that they're serving their own countries properly. And certainly a president of the United States should be saying to other governments, no, you don't determine our foreign policy. So this is what I hope is now starting to happen. It's been a long time where the U.S. has been absurdly manipulated to the U.S. disadvantage, now diplomatic isolation, endless wars, and so on. Maybe something is going to change at this point. I ask this firmly with tongue in cheek, but have you heard from Prime Minister Netanyahu

or from President-elect Trump? Well, that is very much tongue in cheek. I heard from President Trump only indirectly being on Truth Social. So that was an interesting way to hear. I did not hear from Prime Minister Netanyahu, although I did hear from one of his ministers who roundly attacked me following an interview that I had with Tucker Carlson. And I responded. I was happy to respond in the Israeli media that the things that I am saying are not even against Israel. The criticisms that I'm making are against a government

that is not serving the purpose of its people and is a disservice to world peace. And that unfortunately has been what Netanyahu has been for a very long time. What you said was to articulate the observation, the truthful observation, that Netanyahu personally has been behind every war the United States has recently fought in the Middle East, as fruitless, useless, and destructive as they have been, and that he is a deep, dark SOB. And that is the part that Trump posted. So he was obviously sending a message to Netanyahu. I may be Israel's best friend, but you're not going to tell me how to run,

unlike you do with Joe Biden, how to run American foreign policy. And for that, when did you say this? When was the talk at Cambridge? It was a while ago. It was 2024, was it not? It was in 2024. I don't remember exactly the dates. It was a quick visit through the UK. So I had a chance to go to Oxford and to Cambridge and to meet with students there. And they were interested in foreign policy. Why are there so many wars?

Why does this danger continue to escalate? And that was the context in which I spoke. But we do know a lot now from participants in the Iraq war. We do know how Netanyahu came and was a great cheerleader of this war. We do know, unfortunately, the role that the Israel lobby played in stoking that war, a war of false pretenses. We do know, unfortunately, again, of a basic political strategy that dates back to a document called Clean Break in 1996, when Netanyahu first became prime minister in Israel, with American political advisors tightly linked with the American political system. And the clean break was the break with the international process of

land for peace. In other words, the idea that there would be a Palestinian state alongside Israel as determined by international law and that peace would come in that context. And what Netanyahu came to power, determined to do, was to prevent a Palestinian state. This was against international law. This was a claim of territory that Israel would continue to rule over millions of Palestinian people. with you, the United States, I should add, overthrow governments that support the opposition to our policies. And when Hamas or Hezbollah or other groups fight Israel, well, the governments in the region that support them, we will overthrow them. You should go to war with them. That was the idea.

What an idea. Instead of saying there should be diplomacy, there should be an agreement based on peace, Israel said, no, no, we will have it all and you will go to war so that we have it all. Now, we have an incoming U.S. government that has expressed in the past with President Trump very strong, unreserved support for Israel, and many people around President Trump have said in the past, well, yes, we can ignore the Palestinian question because other governments in the region, especially Saudi Arabia, will make peace with Israel. And they don't care about the Palestinians. They don't care whether there is a Palestinian state. They don't care whether Israel is occupying territory or fighting absolutely brutal he knows this, but what he's going to find when he comes into office in a few days is that the Saudi government, which is an important ally of the United States, is saying absolutely clearly, we can have peace in the Middle East. We can, of course, have normal relations with Israel. We can end this bloodshed. But it requires a state of Palestine living in peace next to the state of Israel. This is what all of the world has been saying

for years, except the government of Israel under Netanyahu and the United States government, which under Biden did every single thing that Netanyahu said. And so we gave up our foreign policy. Israel, under Netanyahu, pursued a radical foreign policy. War has spread. Netanyahu was betting that when President Trump comes in, not only will the war spread, but the United States will go to war against Iran. That's the last one on Netanyahu's list that the United States hasn't fought so far. But what President Trump will hear from every country in the region, from the Saudis, from all of the countries in the Gulf, from Egypt, from Jordan, from the new government in Lebanon, from Turkey, and from Iran. Yes, from Iran. I know it because I hear it directly in my conversations with the leadership of that country. There can be peace. There can be normal

relations with Israel, but only with a state of Palestine alongside Israel so that the region can go to peace. So this is what I'm really hoping, not just for a ceasefire in the next days, which would be wonderful news, but true peace in the Middle East. And I would like nothing more than a tremendous success of President Trump at the start of his administration to help guide, for the first time in decades, a real peace in the Middle East. But it requires that the United States exercise its own foreign policy to say to the Israelis, whether you like it or not, international law, the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the G20, the BRICS, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the whole world is saying we

want peace, no more of these wars on behalf of an untenable Israeli policy. If President Trump will do this, this would change history for the good. This would make the world tremendously safer. This would achieve peace in the Middle East. And it's not impossible that this could happen. We may see a historic change sooner than we think because ministers Ben-Gavir and Smotrich are threatening to resign from the Netanyahu government. As I understand it, that might bring him under the 61 votes he needs in the Knesset, which will collapse his government and force elections in Israel. People should understand who Ben-Gabir and Smotrich are.

They are not only core to Netanyahu's government right now, they are complete extremists. They are the ones that say, without any scruples, without any recognition of international law or any morals, as I would say it, we will control everything. All of the occupied lands annex them, push out the Palestinians, the ones that aren't killed under the U.S. bombs that the U.S. has been giving to us under Biden to kill tens of thousands of innocent women and children, destroy the hospitals, destroy the infrastructure of Gaza. Those are the two that have been the most extremist in the government. If they leave because they can't even accept a ceasefire. This is what we are really facing. And during the

Biden administration, it was that extremism that was U.S. foreign policy until today, until even Blinken asked about this in his recent interview. He said, I can't see anything wrong with what Israel was doing, basically. They were just defending themselves. No, what they were doing was destroying a population in order to assert full illegal control over occupied territories and to prevent a state of Palestine living in peace side by side with Israel. That's what they were doing. So if these two leave, this is the breakthrough. Chris, I'd like you to look for that clip of Secretary Blinken being asked about, are you, by the New York Times reporter, are you worried

that history will view you as having presided over genocide while Professor Sachs and I speak? Was Benjamin Netanyahu involved in the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin? I don't think so. I don't know. I don't think so. But what I do believe is that the extremism and the zealotry was responsible for the death of a peacemaker, because Yitzhak Rabin was the last prime minister of Israel that really tried to have a state of Palestine and a state of Israel as the basis of peace. And he was killed not by an Arab jihadist. No, he was killed by a Jewish zealot of the kind that is in power today. And many of the political supporters of the government in power today, one could say cheered or approved, some even celebrated the death of a peacemaker. Well,

this is known throughout history. I don't think Netanyahu, for years, which is to say there is no way to peace. They just want to kill us on the other side. So we have to do what we have to do. This is the big lie. Right. Which has brought us so many of these wars. Here's Secretary Blinken on genocide.

Please watch his, it's a short clip, please watch his body language, Jeff. Do you, Secretary Blinken, worry that perhaps you have been presiding over what the world will see as a genocide? No, it's not, first of all. Second, as to how the world sees it, I can't fully answer to that. But everyone has to look at the facts and draw their own conclusions from those facts. And my conclusions are clear. He's digging a hole deeper. Well, it's not everyone has to look at the facts and draw their own conclusions. National Court of Justice, brought by the government of South Africa, joined by many other governments that say on the basis of extraordinarily detailed briefs that Israel is in rampant, gross, flagrant violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. So Secretary Blinken isn't going to be able to just say, well, that's your opinion and my opinion is different. We will have a careful, detailed scrutiny of this, which is underway right now. It's shocking to read the briefs that have been

put in on this issue because they are detailed. They are harrowing. They are extraordinarily unpleasant to read, describing the intentionality of Israeli leaders to make Gaza completely unlivable, the celebration of Israeli Defense Force troops posted on TikTok and others Gaza is destroyed. The targeting of hospitals, schools, clinics, mosques, water supplies, power, basic infrastructure, the denial of the most urgent relief, food supplies, medical supplies, the lack of anesthetics as surgeons are operating on children without anesthetic who have been wounded in Israeli bombings. And then the doctors themselves being killed, even sending messages to their loved ones. I have to continue on my duty until the end. And Israel destroying these hospitals, and this is not even hidden. This is posted on videos day by day. So no, Antony Blinken, it's not

true that, well, you have your opinion and someone else has some different opinion, there is evidence. This is happening before our eyes. This is recorded. This is collected and collated. This is being reviewed by the justices of the International Court of Justice. This is a real charge. This is not some word that's being bandied around. This is about a violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. I believe that the court will rule soon. If it does rule that Israel has committed acts of genocide, and it's quite possible that it will, One thing is also certain, and that is that the U.S. leadership,

including Blinken, including President Biden, including Jake Sullivan, including other security leaders, have been complicit in these actions. This is what is shocking for me as an American. What Israel does, I find despicable in this context. The fact that the Biden administration to this moment, as we just saw from Antony Blinken said, nope, I don't see the harm there. That to me as an American is an unbelievable abnegation of responsibility. Here's what the highest ranking person to resign over this from the Blinken Department of State told 60 Minutes two days ago. Cut number 10. Most of the bombs come from America. Most of the technology comes from America. And all of the fighter jets, all of Israel's fixed-wing fleet comes from America. There is a linkage between

every single bomb that is dropped in Gaza and the U.S. because every single bomb that is dropped in Gaza and the US, because every single bomb that is dropped is dropped from an American-made plane. These Israeli airstrikes, you could say, are made in America. They are. True. Israel could not fight one day without the United States funding, arming, providing diplomatic cover, using its veto in the United Nations, providing intelligence, in other words, complete and total engagement in what has happened. We don't really know and I think we will find out more whether President Biden has even been of the state of mind to be president during this period

fully. He is in responsibility. I don't know who's been making the decisions, but the decisions that, those concerns have meant nothing in practice because the U.S. has given a blank check. It's been Blinken who has certified that Israel is operating within international and American law, a false certification. So the complicity is very intensive. It's not a casual complicity. It's a deep complicity. Professor Sachs, thank you very much, my dear friend. You are a living example that intellectual honesty and personal courage can sometimes bend the arc of history. Look forward to seeing. Yeah, thank you. Let's just hope that President Trump comes in and does what he has said, which is to make America sovereign again, so that we have our own foreign policy, we pursue our own interests, and our interests are in peace in the Middle East with two states living side by side, Palestine and Israel.

If President Trump does this, I want to be in the front of the parade to get him a Nobel Peace Prize. First thing, it's within his reach. I so dearly hope that he'll follow the path of peace on this. Same here, Professor Sachs. Thank you very much. Safe travels. We'll see you next week. Thank you. Great to be with you. A great man whose personal courage and intellectual honesty has reached into Mar-a-Lago and soon into the Oval Office and probably will have a profound effect on the saving of innocent human lives and hopefully bringing a lasting peace.

Coming up at 12 noon today, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out. Thank you.