Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Saving Israel by Saving Gaza.

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Saving Israel by Saving Gaza.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 January 2nd, 2024. Happy New Year to everybody. Professor Sachs joins us now. I'm raising my voice because Chris is all excited about somebody else in the house. Happy New Year to everybody. Professor Sachs joins us now. I'm raising my voice because Chris is all excited about somebody else in the house. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you, Professor Sachs. And thank you very much for joining us.

Is the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu in danger of destroying Israel by the manner in which it's attempting to destroy Gaza. I think the brutality of what Israel is doing, and it really is genocidal intent, according to legal scholars, is beyond acceptable. It's leading to a worldwide revulsion. Israel has one supporter left. That's the United States. But inside the United States, the American people do not support what Israel is doing. So the extremism of the Israeli government and its extreme intention, which is to fully dominate the occupied territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and its war crimes are leading to a huge antipathy and backlash from the rest of the world. Israel counts on unconditional support from the United States for all of this. I don't believe that there will be unconditional support from the United States much longer at all because what Israel is doing is unacceptable. Is what Israel is doing destroying Israel as well? And if so,

how? Do you mean by total and complete isolation, by risking the loss of friendship of its closest ally, or by military incursions physically to stop the invasion? Well, you know, what Israel is doing right now is slaughtering people in Gaza. The death toll has now increased to over 22,000. Most are women and children. Israel has displaced more than 2 million people. It told them, go south, go south in Gaza, and then it bombed the south as well. The idea is very clear. If you watch day to day and listen carefully to the Israeli politicians, they want to ethnically cleanse Gaza. They want the Palestinians out. But ethnic

cleansing is a massive war crime. And Egypt, which is on the border, said they will not be party to ethnic cleansing. So Israel has destroyed the habitation of hundreds of thousands of people, pushed 2 million out of their homes and continues the onslaught right now. Now, what are the implications of this? Well, I think the first implication is Israel can't do this a single day without the United States complicity, basically. I say complicity because the United States provides munitions all the time to Israel. In fact, there was just a recent shipment that Blinken declared under emergency procedures to avoid any scrutiny by the U.S. Congress, because the American public does not accept this. But the point is Israel day by day depends on the United States for its munitions. The United States says no, the war stops. And the United States should

absolutely say no. Israel is isolating not only itself, but is isolating the United States. Just within the last few hours, Israel bombed a neighborhood in Beirut, killing, according to the wires, a leading Hamas official, but killing a lot of other people as well, because it was apparently a drone attack in a neighborhood, a residential neighborhood of Beirut. So Israel's also provoking a much wider war. The United States absolutely doesn't want a wider Middle East war. My God, we've got enough wars. We've depleted enough stockpiles. We are absolutely in no position to have, and of course there shouldn't be, but in no position to have a wider Middle East war. But Israel is taking steps that could lead to that as well. This is a dead end approach. It's a dead end because it's all predicated on an absolutely unacceptable

idea. The idea of this government in Israel is that Israel should permanently dominate what they call greater Israel, which means not only geographic Israel, but the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza in perpetuity. And that has become a religious zealous idea, as well as a hardline right-wing nationalist idea, as well as a purported security idea. So this is the principle on which Israel is acting, and it's an absolutely unacceptable principle for the rest of the world. Isn't Joe Biden being utterly reckless by his willingness to involve the United States in complicity with this? Joe Biden is on vacation. Where's Joe Biden? Where's the United States leadership? We have a president who is out of date, out of time, out of leadership, and who does not defend U.S. interests in this. The U.S. interest is not to be an accomplice to genocide. The U.S.

interest is to stop this fighting and make a political solution. When Biden said, yes, a political solution, two-state solution, you'd basically get 192 countries in the UN to agree with that. Israel would essentially be the only one to oppose that. So if the United States decided it's time for politics, not war, we'd have politics. But Biden's not doing that. He is on vacation and his secretary of state is bypassing Congress, shipping weapons. You listen to the vulgarity of the Israeli government. They're not going to stop on their own. In fact, they say, oh, this is going to be another year of war.

How many more people killed every day? How much more violence? How much more expansion of the war in the Middle East? But they're after something that is completely unacceptable. This domination over the Palestinian people. It can't be sustained. You and I have talked about this before, what I'm now about to raise, and you alluded to it a few minutes ago, and that is while Joe Biden was wherever he was over the New Year's holiday, Secretary Blinken certified under oath that the need for him to spend money unapproved by Congress was vital to the national security of the United States. I would defy him to explain that, whether under oath or not, how he could even make that argument. It is vital to his own views and wishes to take taxpayer dollars to continue this slaughter. It is hardly vital. Is there even the remotest United States national security interest

in helping Israel to perpetrate this slaughter, Professor Sachs? It's contrary, directly contrary to U.S. security interests. It's contrary to U.S. diplomatic interests. It's contrary to U.S. diplomatic interests. It's contrary to physical security because American troops are being shelled all over the Middle East as this continues. So, of course, it's not an emergency that behooves us to push the munitions so that Israel can continue this slaughter. It's exactly the opposite. Now, if this were discussed properly in a proper deliberative debate in the U.S., people would understand this. That's why Blinken subverted the legislative process and did it as an executive branch war. This is how our wars are fought. They're fought without the public engagement, without the public approval.

Congress long ago basically died in defending the voice of the American people because it was bought out by the military industrial complex a very long time ago. So Congress murmurs a little bit of unhappiness. It's something like the Roman Senate, I would say, in the first century AD after the Roman Republic ended. There were still the senators there,

but what did they do? They walked around in their togas. We have a similar situation in the U.S. Congress, which is executive branch fought wars and no debate or oversight by the Congress. What happened in South Africa recently with a judicial determination or some governmental declaration? This is the only country that I know of that has said this, that Israel is engaged in genocide. Well, President Erdogan has as well. But the only country that purports to have said it officially. Do you know what this is about? Well, what they did was file an action with the

International Court of Justice in the Netherlands, saying that the court should examine this situation because Israel is violating the Genocide Convention. So this was a case made by the government of South Africa against the government of Israel in the International Court of Justice. And now a legal process will ensue. I saw just on the wires a moment ago that Israel has answered the complaint, but I haven't been able to look at Israel's response to this. We have an interesting cut for you, which is both the South African application and the Israeli response. Number three, Chris. South Africa's court application says Israel's acts are genocidal in character, intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group. Israel has rejected the claim, calling it blood

libel. In a statement, it said South Africa's claim lacks both a factual and a legal basis and constitutes despicable and contemptuous exploitation of the court. I don't know how they can say it lacks a factual and legal basis, but what do they mean by blood libel? That sounds like something from the medieval era. Well, look, the problem for Israel is that it's filled with loudmouth politicians who have said exactly what they're doing. Smotrich, who is the finance minister and the head of one of the religious settler movements, that is, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories that have been deemed to be illegal under international law, UN Security Council resolutions. He said that Gaza should go from a population of more than 2 million to a population of between 100,000 and 200,000.

Now, how that's going to come about, presumably, although I don't know the generous interpretation, but one interpretation is physically removing those people. That is ethnic cleansing, a massive war crime. Of course, they're also killing people in vast numbers. And the number of statements that the Israeli leaders have made, not hiding their intentions, but stating them that Gaza will be uninhabitable at the end. A mayor of one of the cities in Israel, oh, I can't even repeat the vulgarities, but essentially, you know, destroy Gaza. Then he said, no, no, no, I didn't mean murder. I just meant get them all out. And it's one, and Netanyahu says, voluntary migration, voluntary. You bomb them, and then maybe they will, quote, voluntarily move to avoid being killed by your bombs. Is there any practical or geopolitical advantage to this kind of slaughter?

No. No, it's a massive war crime. It is terrible, terrible in humanity. It is in the service of a, for many of them, a zealous religious idea from the 6th century BC, which is that many of these religious zealots say God gave all this land to the Jewish people. And the fact that there are 7 million Palestinians there, that doesn't matter. We have the right to do whatever we want. And no, there's nothing but hatred, absolute lack of care for the lives of millions of people, and a zealotry which really needs to be better understood in the U.S. because this is not what Israel was politically, socially, or culturally

50 years ago, but it is what it has become. After the Six-Day War, a religious kind of messianic movement took place based on the idea of religious, hyper-religious Israelis settling in the occupied lands because God gave Israel those lands. And instead of talking about security or two-state solution and so forth, the idea was a zealotry, which is no compromise, no concession, compromise. It's we take your land. So it's not even a matter of compromise. But this is what Israel has become politically. Americans are not really aware of that fully because it's weird and it's strange and it is not what Israel was 30 or 40 years ago. So Americans are only coming to understand now what they are actually backing. And it's completely shocking. But even the Israel of October 6th, wasn't it essentially, and hasn't it essentially been

a secular country? Has it been hijacked by a small group of right-wingers who are necessary in the Netanyahu coalition to give him the 64 votes in the Knesset he needs, and without which he wouldn't even have 60 and the government would collapse? And does this gaggle of extremists hijack the mentality and the culture of the country? No, it's a bit worse than that. It's not just a small group. It is a dominant part of the politics right now, but it's a mix of two different kinds of politics. There's a significant messianic religious politics, and then there is a right-wing nationalist politics. They both come to the same point. No compromise. Israel will control all of what is called greater Israel. This is important. Greater Israel means in the Israeli parlance,

Israel geographically plus the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. So this is a broad alliance. It's not a small group, but it has both a secular, it has a secular and a religious side to it. But the point is on October 6th, there was no intention at all of any compromise. So what there was was not immediate ethnic cleansing. There was an apartheid state, which is we dominate, we rule. The Palestinians have no rights. We control everything. That was October 6th. October 8th is we will ethnically cleanse Gaza. Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu over the weekend saying that Israel will retake control of the border between Gaza and Egypt.

I don't know how they can do that, but this is what he said. It's in Hebrew, so I'll read the translation. To Philadelphia. read the translation. With Philadelphia corridor, or to put it more correctly, the southern stoppage point of Gaza must be in our hands. It must be shut. It is clear that any other

arrangement would not ensure the demilitarization that we see. The war is at its height. We are fighting on all the fronts. We have huge success, but we also have painful cases. Achieving victory will require time. As the Israeli Army Chief of Staff has said, the war will continue for many more months. On the northern border, we are landing heavy blows

against Hezbollah, eliminating many terrorists and destroying the enemy's capabilities. We approved operational plans for the continuation of the fighting. If Hezbollah expands the warfare, it will suffer blows that it has not dreamed of.

It's no two for Iran. Sounds like Lindsey Graham scripted it for him. So why pick a fight with Iran? And why deny that there have been serious casualties on the part of the IDF? Israel is fighting with U.S. arms and U.S. munitions. Netanyahu believes that this is an open pipeline for him to say what he wants and do what he wants. I think that this is wrong because the American people

must be aghast at this, and growing numbers certainly are. And Biden's collapse in his electoral prospects reflects in no small part the fact that the disapproval rating of his policies vis-a-vis Israel are enormous. So I think that Netanyahu, who in general is a highly destructive force, I think he has it wrong. He thinks, so we can continue to do this with impunity, with the whole world against us, doesn't matter, we can expand the wars. He can't do that one day unless the U.S. backs him. Here's Nelson Mandela in 1990 discussing all of this, Professor Sachs. which some political analysts make, is to think that their enemies should be our enemies. I explained to Mr. Sidney that we identify with the PLO because just like ourselves they are fighting for the right of self-determination you know it's said uh daily and accurately that the situation in Palestine is basically apartheid rule that Israel dominates over 7 million Palestinians and the Palestinian lands. Apartheid rule will not stand in this world. That's why

Israel's approach is untenable. But there's a fervent amount of support in Israel for that approach. Again, it's a mix of religious zealotry and a mix of hardline right-wing nationalism. But apartheid went the way of into the dustbin of history, as they say. And this greater Israel approach also has no long-term basis to survive in this form. Israel is going to have to think of living side by side with the Palestinian people. There's no alternative. Before we go, Professor Sachs, do you see an erosion of U.S. support for Israel coming? I do, because every day the war crimes of Israel are in front of our eyes. The horror of it, of women and children dying, schools being blown up, hospitals being blown up, people starving, is not acceptable to the American people, nor is it in America's security interests at all

to be completely isolated by defending this kind of massacre. So I don't believe that this has a long basis. Now, I'm running against a lot of modern American history where Israel had a blank check and the Israel lobby got what it wanted. But I think that that is actually not going to be the way things proceed in the coming weeks. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Professor Sachs' piece is called Saving Israel by Ending Its War in Gaza. It's posted on judsnap.com. It, like his other writings, is a masterpiece. Professor, thank you very much. Happy New Year. Great to be with you. Happy New Year. We'll see you again soon. All the best. Still our busy day coming up. Matt Ho, Karen Kwiatkowski, the inimitable Larry Johnson. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. I'm out.