Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The Biden-Schumer Plan to Kill More Ukrainians

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The Biden-Schumer Plan to Kill More UkrainiansSee 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 Thursday, February 8th, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us. This is his second time with us this week because of breaking news in Israel and Ukraine. So to Israel first, Professor Sachs. Yesterday, the government of Saudi Arabia announced that it would not normalize relations with Israel until certain conditions were met. We all were led to believe that prior to October 7th, the events of October 7th, that normalization was proceeding apace. But yesterday, the Saudis said that the Israelis would have to accept a two-state solution with 1967 borders,

with the capital of Palestine in East Jerusalem, with a fully independent Palestine capable of handling its own affairs, including security and military. Why would Riyadh be saying that? And what is the United States expected to do? They know what Netanyahu and the Israeli position is. Well, look, this has been the Arab position for 20 years, and it's a quite reasonable position because it's the international legal position dating back to 1967. After the Six-Day War, the UN Security Council said that Israel cannot gain territory by virtue of that war. This must revert to Palestine. And over the decades, the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly have repeatedly, by unanimity or overwhelming margin, said we need a two-state solution. That's actually US policy as well. And the Arab world said, look, we're ready for peace,

we're ready for normalization, we're ready for mutual security with Israel, but it needs to be a two-state solution. So what the Saudis said yesterday, which was very important, wasn't something new. What made it important was the lies or the fibs or the wishful thinking of the United States, which kept saying, oh, they're very close to normalization. The Saudis have been very clear and the Arab and Islamic leaders have been very clear. Yes, there can be normalization. We're not implacably opposed to Israel, but there needs to be a Palestinian state. And I believe that is the right position and a very realistic position and the way to peace. It's just that the U.S. wanted to fake it. And Israel certainly, especially with this extremist right-wing government, which is completely opposed to any kind of Palestinian state,

thought that somehow they could slip in normalization and still rule over 7 million Palestinians. Well, it was a fiction, a cruelty, and it was exposed by Saudi Arabia yesterday. That's what happened. Do you think that the Saudis are under pressure? I realize that it's a monarchy, a dictatorship effectively. But do you think that there is some pressure from the enormous Arab anger in that part of the world as to what's happening in Gaza? Well, I think that the policy is in line with that because the Arab world and the Islamic world more generally says there needs to be political rights for the Palestinian people. That's quite natural. But it's been that way for decades. That's not something new or post-October 7.

So I wouldn't call it pressure exactly. I would just call it the real situation of a leading country of the Islamic world, a really key country of the Islamic world, that naturally they would say yes. In fact, it's quite forthcoming. This is the point. To say, of course, we'll normalize with Israel. That by itself is the important point. But there needs to be a Palestinian state. You see, when I speak with Israeli, I'll say friends, but it's so painful they don't speak to me very much anymore. They say there's no one to talk to. They hate us. And the Arab world say, we don't hate you. We will have normal relations with you, but there needs to be a Palestinian state alongside Israel. So what the Saudis are saying is absolutely the path to peace. And we should take that as a positive sign, not as a

sign of implacable opposition or anything else, but just as a very normal point that has been at the center of international law all the way back to 1967. But Israeli leaders, let's say, got it in their heads early in the period after the Six-Day War that we don't have to give back some or even all of this, because they started with the settlements that they knew to be illegal under international law and were subsequently repeatedly declared to be illegal under international law because they wanted to make, quote, facts on the ground. They wanted Israelis in Palestinian occupied territories. Then what happened is something really strange and very, very upsetting, which is that this became a matter of religious fervor. So what happened in the 80s and 90s, and now we have it clearly across the Israeli cabinet,

is that these are religious nationalist zealots. God gave us the land. That's what a book of Joshua from 2,500 years ago says. We don't have to compromise. This is our God-given right. And so we've complete, of course, barrier to peace, except that the United States doesn't have to accept the Israeli view of all of this because it absolutely is not in the world's interest at all, and it's not consistent with international law, and it has isolated the United States completely and made the United States complicit in what Israel is doing in Gaza, which is absolutely against our national interest and against what the American people say they want to happen. They don't agree with what Israel is doing. But our politicians, and especially this administration and Congress, they don't listen. They don't care what the American people say. They don't care what the world says. But that's not good for the United States. It's not good for Israel, by the way. It's extraordinarily dangerous to have this kind of radical extremism because it's devastatingly isolating for Israel.

Here's what the United States had to say about it. Here's Secretary Blinken. I don't know if it was yesterday or earlier today, but he's at the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, and he's questioned by a reporter from Channel 13 on Israeli television. This is all in English. I don't think he'll be happy with what he has to say, but here it is. It seems to be that the entire Biden doctrine vis-a-vis Israel, a future Palestinian state, a normalization with Saudi Arabia is collapsing. Netanyahu says no with capital N to any form of a Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia says a normalization with Israel will only be considered after an independent Palestinian state is formed in the 1967 borders, which is Jerusalem as its capital. So how does the US intend to break this deadlock?

When I saw the crown prince in Saudi Arabia just a couple of days ago, he repeated to me his desire and determination to pursue normalization. But he also repeated that in order to do that, two things need to happen. One, there needs to be calm in Gaza. Two, there needs to be a clear and credible pathway to a Palestinian state. So as I said before, you can see the path forward for Israel and for the entire region with integration, with normalization, with security assurances, with the pathway to a Palestinian state that entirely changes the equation

and the future for the better for Israelis, for Arabs, for Palestinians, and in so doing, isolates groups like Hamas, isolates countries like Iran that want a very different future. But as I also said, going down that path, pursuing it requires hard decisions. None of this is easy. And so it will be up to Israelis to decide what they want to do, when they want to do it, how they want to do it. No one's going to make those decisions for them. All that we can do is to show what the possibilities are, what the options are, what the future could be, and compare it to the alternative.

And the alternative right now looks like an endless cycle of violence and destruction and despair. Let me repeat the line that I think is the most absurd aside from the last line, because the violence, destruction, and despair is being financed by the United States government. Quote, it will be up to Israelis to decide what they want to do, when they want to do it, and how they want to do it. What do you think is going to come of that, Professor Sachs? It's bizarre. As President Biden is calling today for unconditional billions of dollars of munitions for Israel, saying we will arm Israel, we will provide the money for Israel. And then a secretary of state of the United States says, well, it's completely up to Israel what what they'll do. All that we can do is to show them this or show them that. Well, if you wanted to take that approach because other things that Blinken said were right,

that a two-state solution would open up new possibilities, and you want to leave it to the Israelis, okay, tell them you're on your own. You don't get billions of dollars from us. You don't get the munitions to fight your genocidal attacks in Gaza. You don't get to say, greater Israel, no two-state solution with our money and our munitions. In that sense, it's true. Israel would be on its own, but we are completely backstopping whatever Israel says. Who runs our government? Well, that's a rhetorical question, but it's also a serious question. The United States should run the U.S. government for the interests of the United States and for

the interests of the world, let me add, not to say all we can do is whatever Israel wants to do, especially when you have an extremist government that is blocking the road to peace and, according to the International Court of Justice, is plausibly committing genocide with our money and our munitions. So Blinken, somebody needs to remind him he's the Secretary of State of the United States. Somebody needs to remind him he's the Secretary of State of the United States. Somebody needs to remind the President of the United States that he's President of the United States. He's not a member of the Israeli cabinet. It's not all that we can do is to do whatever Israel wants to do. In the past two hours, I'm switching gears now. The Senate of the United States voted by a two-thirds

majority to cut off debate on a foreign aid package, which includes $48 billion for Ukraine, $11 billion for Israel, $9 billion for Gaza. Here we go again. We're giving them the bombs with which to kill, but we'll give you some money if you survive the killing. And five billion dollars for Taiwan. In whose best interest is all of this? None of it has been properly debated for one moment with hearings, with debates, with any organized approach. This is the military industrial complex talking. This is the Israel lobby talking. This is Biden covering up his disastrous policy in Ukraine that goes back 10 years to this month because it was Biden, Nuland, Blinken, and Sullivan that were part of

the conspiracy to overthrow the government of Yanukovych, which was a government of Ukrainian neutrality. And it was that coup 10 years ago this month that set in motion this disastrous war, which is killing Ukrainians by the tens of thousands a month and wounding tens of thousands a month and half a million casualties till this date. And they just don't want to talk about any solution other than more U.S. funding, more weapons, more war. It's as pathetic as the Israel side that we were just talking about. They don't know anything about diplomatic outcomes. They don't know anything other than funding wars. And it has trapped the United States, by the way, $61 billion. It ain't chump change.

It's bigger than so many of our vital programs. I quickly added up our Department of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, our Women, Infant and Children Nutrition Program. You add all that up, it's less than we're going to throw away right now to kill more Ukrainians without a question asked so that Biden can get to November and not be embarrassed with the disastrous policy that he's been pursuing for the last 10 years. But isn't it only going to get worse? I mean, what are we going to give them? Cash with which to run the government? More military equipment that they don't have the human beings to operate?

They have a new commander-in-chief of their military whose nickname is the Butcherer Bakhmut. They're talking about butchering his own troops, not the Russian troops. Isn't the country falling apart and we're still going to send between 40, 50, 60 billion to them? Yes, that's exactly right. And these are obvious points for you and for me, but not for our senators who don't want to talk about the truth at all. So this is just blind voting for war without any of these most basic considerations. And where do we even hear a word about these issues discussed in the Senate? The answer is we don't at all. This is literally mindless in the sense that there's no deliberative process. This is funding a war machine on autopilot right now because Biden has already wasted half a million lives in Ukraine and more than $100 billion of the United States on a failed gambit to push NATO enlargement,

which was a disastrous idea to begin with, an impossible idea today, never going to happen, with a bloody battlefield in which Ukraine is only going to lose thousands and tens of thousands more people, whoever they can round up, grab off the streets, and send to the front lines to their death. That's literally what's happening these days. In about an hour and a half's time, my friend and former colleague at Fox News, he's no longer there either. Everybody knows that. Tucker Carlson will release his interview of Vladimir Putin. Whatever you think of Carlson, I think it's a wonderful opportunity to listen to what Putin has to say in an unrehearsed and spontaneous environment. But I can't resist, you'll know I'm laughing in a minute, this is ridiculous, what we're about to show you. I have to lighten up the mood a little

bit. I can't resist showing you what your friend and former colleague, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had to say about this interview, again, before it was released and before she saw it. Watch this. What does that tell you about Tucker Carlson and right-wing media and also Vladimir Putin? Well, it shows me what I think we've all known. He's what's called a useful idiot. I mean, if you actually read translations of what's being said on Russian media, they make fun of him. I mean, he's like a puppy dog. You know, he somehow is after having been fired from so many outlets in the United States. He I would not be surprised if he emerges with a contract with a Russian outlet. Is this what the elites in the State Department think like? It's grotesque because the whole point of all of the U.S. propaganda and the lies told by the White House and the lies told about this war from the start because this war was

completely avoidable. This war was a war of NATO expansion that never should have happened. This war results from a coup during the time that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and Victoria Nuland was her buddy and aide. All of this is hidden from the American people, and they do everything to make sure we never hear a contrary point of view. And the idea that we can hear what President Putin has to say in an interview with Tucker Carlson, that's only a good thing that we get to hear this. We can evaluate, we can listen, we can discuss.

And it wouldn't be a bad idea, I'll add, for President Biden to have not an interview, but an exchange with President Putin rather than sending hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to their deaths or grave injury, if he had just talked and negotiated a proper outcome, all of this could have been avoided. But we live in a world where you don't talk to the other side. You don't listen to the other side. You don't negotiate with the other side. You just go to war. That's the Israel position. That's the position in Ukraine. This is how we act. Well, that's a good way to blow up the world if you don't know how to talk to other people. America's poodle, Great Britain, the Prime Minister Sunak announced that the Brits would consider sending an expeditionary force. I guess that's a British phrase, but it's troops on the ground to Ukraine. And that the Brits would consider participating in enforcing a no-fly zone over Kiev.

How insane are these two offerings? Well, they don't even have people to send because the latest story was they barely have an army left. It's a pathetic place, the dreams of the 19th century. And all their cheerleading is their great imperial dreams of the Crimean War. They think that they're fighting the war of 1853 to 1856. It's pathetic, actually. And to listen to them when they have nothing to add is really pathetic. Professor Sachs, it's been a long day and a long week for both of us. Thank you very much for jumping on at the last minute on these two critical issues. You are much, much appreciated, as you know. I don't know where you'll be next

week, but I hope we can have your usual time. We'll do it. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Professor. All the best. Wow. Our usual guest at this time, Max Blumenthal, was unable to make it. He's happy and well, just out of reach of the internet at the moment. Professor Sachs was more than willing to jump in on these two critical issues. I believe it's six o'clock Eastern tonight. The tape, I'm using an old fashioned word, of the Tucker Carlson interview President Putin will be posted. There'll probably be some crashing on the internet because so many people are going to want to see it. But I also believe that at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon, Scott Ritter will be here to analyze it with me for you.

We also have Colonel Wilkerson tomorrow, and we have the Intelligence Roundtable. It's a Friday afternoon. Judge Napolitano, a lot going on. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.