Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Trump Colonizing Gaza.

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Trump Colonizing Gaza.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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Today is Monday, October 6th, 2025. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be here with us in just a moment on this neo-colonial deal to give Gaza to Jared Kushner? But first this. My friends, if you care about your liberty and your right to control your own future, you need to hear about this. From October 10th to 12th, Mikkel Thorpe, host of the Expat Money Show, is bringing together top experts from around the world

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Reserve your free ticket at expatmoneysummit.com. And if you want VIP access with special perks, including lifetime replay access, and exclusive VIP panels, use promo code judge for 20% off your upgrade. That's expatmoneysummit.com promo code judge. Professor Sacks, welcome here, my dear friend. Of course, I was being a little hyperbolic in my introduction by arguing that this deal is to allow Jared Kushner to redevelop Gaza into the Trump Gaza. And at one point, the president did explain that. Let's take a step back.

Why should Hamas negotiate with Israel? and the United States. Israel attempted to kill these very Hamas negotiators in Doha, has killed Hezbollah negotiators in Lebanon, and the president of the United States lured Iran into a false belief that they were engaged in serious negotiations right before Israel and the United States bombed. Who would trust Israel and the United States in a negotiation? I don't know if anyone would actually trust Israel and the United States in a negotiation, but there is and has been for a long time a strong interest in peace with Hamas and a strong interest in peace far more generally with the Arab world.

Actually, despite all of the propaganda we hear in the United States and especially in Israel, the Arabs put together a peace plan back in 2002, which they have reiterated for 23 years. And their peace plan is straightforward. It says that there will be normalized relations with Israel and security for Israel, together with a state of Palestine. That's it. Everything that has happened since then, indeed, everything that has happened since 1996, when Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister.

And indeed, everything that has happened since 1967, the Six-Day War, so-called, when Israel occupied all of the Palestinian territories, has been Israel trying to prevent a state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. And because of that, there has been endless war. Now there is mass murder by Israel in Gaza, but the fact of the matter is that what has been on the table for more than 20 years is a straightforward peace proposal, a state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel and the state of Palestine and the state of Israel living according to international law on the borders of the four. of June, 1967. This means that Palestine would be constituted of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and the capital of the state of Palestine would be in East Jerusalem. This is the right endpoint. This is international law. This is what the International Court of Justice ruled last year

is international law. This is what the UN General Assembly by overwhelming votes year and year out has agreed to. And this is what Israel and the United States have blocked until now. Now, in the General Assembly session of the last couple of weeks, we had a number of countries, including France and the United Kingdom and a number of other European countries and Australia and countries from other parts of the world, recognizing the state of Palestine. So the peace deal is very clear. There are only two opponents to it. One is the government of Israel, and the second is the subsidiary of the government of Israel

called the government of the United States, which does whatever Israel says. In this context where peace is absolutely desired by virtually every place in the world and where there is a massacre and mass starvation going on in Gaza, the Trump government facing its isolation has put forward a plan, a so-called 20-point plan. but it prevaricates as usual. It says many right things that the fighting should stop, that there should be an immediate release of the hostages, and immediate release of Palestinians who are held by Israel, that there should be immediate humanitarian aid. All of that is fine.

But when it comes to every political question, well, it basically keeps the colonial structure. That is the structure put in place by Britain and the United States as the colonial overseers and now enforced by Israel as an apartheid state ruling over the Palestinian people. In other words, it ducks the question of the state of Palestine. It recognizes somewhere that, yeah, that's an aspiration of the Palestinian. people. Well, duh. That we needed a president of the United States to tell us in a peace plan that that's an aspiration of the Palestinian people. Instead, what the plan does, together with these

right things, ending starvation, ending the fighting, release of the hostages, release of Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel, all good. It establishes another colonial structure. city that Donald Trump is going to chair and that Tony Blair is going to sit on. So it's literally the British American colonial system, which has been in place since 1921, when Britain took over Palestine after World War I, and with the United States being the great enforcer. And without any honesty or clarity about the fact that you want peace, you make a state of Palestine, like the whole world wants other than Israel and its wholly owned subsidiary of the United States. Isn't it true that Benjamin Netanyahu does not want peace, cannot afford peace, would lose his

job, his government, and perhaps even his immunity and his freedom, if there's peace? I wouldn't put it exactly that way. What I would say is that if there is peace with Israeli control over all of Palestine, in other words, if greater Israel is established, or what they call Eritz Israel, Ha Shlemah, Greater Israel ruling over all of the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, that's what he wants. And he'd settled for peace on Israel's terms. In other words, the Palestinians either die or they go away or they live under a brutal apartheid regime. That's what's on offer from Netanyahu and his colleagues of Ben Gavir and Smotrich.

That's literally what is on offer. I'm not being hyperbolic. I'm explaining literally what Netanyahu said in the UN General Assembly. He said there will never be a Palestinian state. Now, this is odd. It's not Israel's to veto a Palestinian state. International law is that Israel is illegally occupying the Palestinian lands. Already around 155 countries recognize the state of Palestine.

The simple fact is that Netanyahu is simply betting that the United States government will use its veto in the UN and use its military might and its financial wherewithal and its threats to other countries to prevent what international law and the overwhelming majority of the world's people and the overwhelming majority of the American people want because we should remember Donald Trump. is representing not the United States in this. He's representing the Israeli government. If he would look at his own public,

at the American people, Mr. President, if I may address you, the opinion of us, the American people, is that the United States and the other countries should recognize a state of Palestine and that Israel should stop its murderous, behavior in Gaza. This is our will as Americans. That's in our interest as Americans. So all that remains for Netanyahu is this slender thread that the Zionist lobby can keep the U.S. president

on side despite the overwhelming sentiment of the American people, the overwhelming sentiment of the world, international law, repeated votes of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, except for the fact that the U.S. vetoes the resolutions in the U.N. Security Council. And that's what Trump has basically written in his 20-point plan. He's written out a state of Palestine. Why? Because when he met with the Arab leaders, they explained to him, peace can come. Normalization can come with the state of Palestine. But then the next day, he met with Netanyahu and with Ron Dermer, the person who is Netanyahu's American-born political advisor, and they changed the plan to make sure that it was really

a neo-colonial plan, not only dropping the main issue, a state of Palestine is the basis for peace, but then writing in these absurd sections, which it looks like a caricature of colonialism. If I could just read just a piece of it, 0.9 of the plan, Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities. The committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the Board of Peace, which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump,

with other members and heads of state to be announced, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair. This body will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump's peace plan in 2020, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza.

this body will call on best international standards to create modern efficient governance. A Trump economic development plan, a Trump plan, this is now point 10, to rebuild and energize Gaza, is that that's the Jared Kushner Riviera plan, no doubt, will be created by convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East. many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas have been crafted by well-meaning international groups and will be considered. A special economic zone will be established with preferred tariff and access rates. His favorite word, except this means zero tariffs and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries. It's, by the way, it's absurd.

It is a caricature of colonialism. Donald J. Trump is going to chair this committee. And along with Tony Bear the Blair, the butcher of Iraq. Exactly. Why would Hamas accept this? I don't know what Hamas is going to do. I can't imagine why any of the countries that met with President Trump last week would actually accept. this for one moment. It's absurd. And I think that it should be understood one very important

point. The Palestinians, despite decades and decades of abuse and occupation and apartheid rule by Israel, have an extremely well-trained professional cotter. Many of them, I don't know if it's most, but many are working in the Gulf countries, in the Middle East, many in the United States, many in Europe. They've not had a possibility of pursuing their professional lives in occupied Palestine, but they are skilled, they are highly educated, they are great professionals. The Palestinians don't need the tutelage of Donald J. Trump and Tony Blair. The Palestinians don't need years of trusteeship. What is this?

Is this 1920? Is this the mandate period of Britain? Or after 120 years, aren't we a little bit beyond such vulgarity and such overt colonialism that Donald J. Trump will govern the board of Gaza? Come on. I mean, we don't need... Comorialism really means subjugation, almost a form of slavery. Well, of course it does.

And the idea that the Palestinians need years of tutelage before they have self-rule, let's just say they've been waiting many, many decades and after all of these abuses, they don't need years of tutelage. They need their sovereignty. It's very straightforward. It's not even hard. But right now, because Israel rules by force and by murder, it turns on and off any financing that goes to the Palestinian Authority.

It literally turns on and off the water or the electricity or any other public service. It completely restricts the freedom of movement. of people. And in Gaza, it was run like an open air prison, as it was widely described. People could not come and go. People could not trade. They could not do their business. We don't need this kind of colonialism. What we need is a state of Palestine living alongside the state of Israel. Now, what I did was take the 20-point plan, and I posted just a few changes to each of the 20 points to show you could have a 20-point plan that would be perfectly sensible that Hamas could accept and would accept, and that the Arab countries could and would accept, and that the world community could and would accept. And it says, instead of having a governing board of Tony Blair and Donald Trump and others, there would be the Palestinian authority as the government.

And there could be an advisory board making suggestions. Donald Trump could sit on the advisory board. That would be just fine. But the sovereignty would be with the Palestinian people. instead of saying that in some future, there would be the possibility of negotiations leading someday somehow to perhaps a state of Palestine, as it basically says in Trump's plan, there would be a state of Palestine, thank you very much. It's not hard.

More than 150 countries have already realized that. The United States is the only veto of that in the whole United States. nations because there was a unanimous vote in the UN Security Council to admit Palestine as the 194th member state except for the U.S. veto. There would not be a Donald Trump economic development plan. Thank you, but no, thank you. There could be a suggestion. There could be advice. There could be other things. But there would be a Palestinian development plan. Thank you very much. It's called having sovereignty. We are not in 1920 or 1820 or 1720. We are in the year 2025, where colonialism went out of fashion a while ago, and we don't need it back. That's the

basic point. Your point is so thoughtful. What? What incentive is there for Netanyahu to go along with this. He wants to turn Israel into the size of Texas. There is no incentive for NetYahu to go along with this, but this does not depend on Israel. You see, international law says that Israel's borders are the 4th of June, 1967. Israel is in illegal occupation of Gaza. It's destroyed it completely. it's murdered tens of thousands of people. It's starving hundreds of thousands of people, but that's completely illegal. The reason it gets away with it is the United States enables it every day. The reason it actually is able to carry out this mass murder is that Google and Microsoft

and Amazon Cloud Services and Palantir and other American companies are providing the artificial intelligence and the networking and the cloud services for the Israeli defense forces. So this is a U.S. support. This isn't a choice of Israel. Israel has no veto over Palestine becoming a U.N. member state. The U.S. has the veto, not Israel. So this is not something to negotiate with Netanyahu. This is something to make plain that the United States is not supporting this genocide or Israel ruling illegally over the Palestinian people anymore. And there is a plan, by the way, a highly desirable plan for Israel, which is that all of the neighbors would normalize their relations with Israel. Also, what

is in Trump's 20-point plan is fine, that Hamas would be completely demilitarized, that it would not play a role in the government. This would be actually implementable if the counterpart were not continued Israeli rule, but the counterpart was a state of Palestine. That's the point. In other words, if there was a political solution, there could be a political outcome. But Trump, as usual, evaded every political point and instituted and wants to implement a pure continuation of colonial rule. So this is the point. The Arab countries have said

since 2002, we normalize, we make peace. The Israeli people do not ever hear this. Because if you think, our propaganda is thick. Try Israel's propaganda. Israelis are told every day, all they want to do is kill you. I sit with the ambassadors and the foreign ministers. I listen to the governments. I talk to the people of the neighboring countries. I visit the neighboring countries. It's totally false. What they want is the wars to stop in their region so that they can have economic development so they can worry about the water crisis so that they can build infrastructure that's what they want they don't want all these wars all the time but israel has been fomenting wars all the time in order to avoid the obvious a state of palestine

and donald trump plays along with this here's yeah here's what a friend Prime Minister Netanyahu said yesterday, October 5th, about the real path to peace. Chris, cut number three. If you want a real path to peace, then the Palestinians have to come finally to recognize and accept the existence of a Jewish state in their midst. And that hasn't happened. That's why we don't have peace here, because they refuse to, they don't want a state next to Israel.

They want a state instead of Israel. And once any territory they get, they used to attack us. again and again. If we don't change that, then, you know, then this conflict will continue. If we do, we are able with the plan that we have for the day after Hamas and Gaza, if we are able to change that, that goes a long way to securing a long-term peace. Respond to him. He is an outright liar, period, because what the Palestinian and the Arab peace plan and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the UN General Assembly have said and said for years

is two states, a state of Palestine and a state of Israel, living side by side on the borders of the 4th of June 1967. And what Netanyahu said last week at the General Assembly, clearly everybody should read it. He said never a state of Palestine, period. He is a murderer and a liar and a thug. It's enough. It's time for two states living side by side as the will of the whole world wants. And it's time for Donald Trump to be honest and just make it possible for there to be peace. and to end these lies of Netanyahu, which are sheer and total lies.

So where do you think this will go? How do you think this will end up, Professor Sachs? Of course, I don't know. The fact that the Muslim majority countries met with Donald Trump at the end of last week, and said, thank you, Mr. President, for putting a plan on the table, shows how much they want peace. The fact that Trump cheated as usual and then announced a plan, which was not the one that he showed, these leaders a couple of days later after meeting with Netanyahu and Dürmer, shows that the United States government remains in the hands of Israel.

Whether Trump ever makes America have its own foreign policy or whether he remains simply subservient to the Zionist extremism, I don't know. I don't think there can be peace on this absurd basis of Donald J. Trump running Gaza, a shame to even suggest such a thing in this day and age. So the question is whether the United States government starts to represent the American people. And if they do, then the American people want to be together with the rest of the world and with the Palestinian people for two states living side by side. Professor Sachs, thank you very much. I know it's been a long day and it's late where you were and I appreciate your accommodating my schedule. This is an intractable problem and I don't know how it's going to be resolved because Netanyahu controls Trump, the Israeli government and

their Zionist donors here control the American government. That is correct. And the day that the United States starts behaving like the United States is the day that we have peace in the Middle East. Thank you, Professor Sachs. All the best of you. We'll look forward to seeing you again soon, my dear friend. Thank you. We'll talk soon. Thanks. Sure. Thank you. Coming up tomorrow Tuesday at 8 in the morning, Ambassador Chaz Freeman at two in the afternoon, Matthew Ho, at three in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kutkowski, Johnson Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you. Thank you.