Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: US Christian Zionists Attack Free Speech.

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: US Christian Zionists Attack Free Speech.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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and tell them your friend the judge sent you. Professor Sachs, welcome here, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. Thank you for your time. Is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under any serious pressure to stop the genocide? He is under worldwide opprobrium. Israel has lost the support of almost all of the world and much of the American

people. Internally in Israel there's turmoil over many things but probably not enough to threaten the continued murderous onslaught by Netanyahu. It has come down to the United States. Will the US stop Israel's murderous path or not? This is really the issue. The world knows what's going on. Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people. Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza, destroying the life support system, starving hundreds of thousands of people all before our eyes. Everybody knows it.

Everybody knows it. Almost everybody detests it. But it continues because the United States continues in effect to back this murderous Israeli government. For the past couple of weeks there have been reports about a rift between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. And there were a number of events giving rise to this conclusion. The American direct negotiations with Hamas, the President's trip to the Middle East, which ostentatiously didn't go to Israel, the cessation of the bombing of the Houthis, the cessation of the sanctions on Syria.

Yet over the weekend, they each claimed that the rift is a myth and they're good friends with each other. A, does it matter if Donald Trump likes him? And B, do you believe either of them? Well, the last week was, from my point of view, a huge disappointment. When we spoke last week was, from my point of view, a huge disappointment. When we spoke a week ago, I thought there was a chance on a tour of the Middle East

that the genocide of the Palestinians would come up. It was not raised either by the hosts or by the president. The week went on with the deals and bargaining and feasts and so forth as the people of Gaza were being starved and many to death. So nothing was said last week in public. Maybe things were said in private. I'm not giving up on the basic fact that support for Israel is utterly against U.S. interests if what Israel stands for is mass murder. And so there is no interest of the United States, legitimate interest in backing what Israel is doing. And as in so many other issues in the world, there is a clear point to all of this, which is that the current Israeli government wants to rule over of Israel and Palestine. And that means either an oppression

of the Palestinian people or their expulsion or their slaughter. So it's very simple. Will there be a state of Palestine or not? Netanyahu says no, more than 180 countries of the United Nations say yes, and the United States so far vetoes a state of Palestine as a member of the UN. About 140 plus countries have recognized Palestine, but the U.S. vetoes Palestine as a sovereign

state in the United Nations. And this is the basic point. It comes down to a vote of the U.S. Up until now, as we've talked about for years, the U.S. has been complicit in this mass murder. And this remains true until today. Will it continue? It could stop at any moment. Why? Because it's so far from America's interests that it is only in America's interests that it's stop now. Could it stop if the United States and the president of the United States in particular said

mass murder by Israel, continued occupation, continued oppression of the United States in particular said mass murder by Israel, continued occupation, continued oppression of the Palestinian people is not in the U.S. interest, especially as it's opposed by every Arab nation, by every Muslim nation of the 57 in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and by almost every nation of the entire world. Well yes, President Trump could easily reach that conclusion and if he did and said we no longer arm Israel, we no longer provide munitions for Israel, we no longer provide financial support for Israel's murderous approach, it would stop. Do you give credibility to the reports that Netanyahu was furious at the release of Eden

Alexander, the young man from New Jersey with joined American Israeli citizenship who was a member of the IDF and who was taken by Hamas on October 7th, and who with his parents declined to see Netanyahu because the boy was released by American negotiators, not by anything Netanyahu did. Truly, I have no information and no idea. But I find Netanyahu's 30-year murderous approach, which is we will rule over the Palestinians and we will go to war as necessary to keep that rule and we will go to war anywhere in the Middle East for those against those who oppose us.

I find it so detestable that anything is possible. But they don't let me in whether he's annoyed by a hostage release. Frankly, the real question is, will 2 million starving people in Gaza be relieved of their starvation? This is the pressing point of this hour as we speak. And the United States is the only bulwark for what Israel is doing. Of course, it's... What will it take to motivate Trump to do something, to say to Netanyahu, we're sending aid in and you will step down or stop the slurs, stop it right now, we're not going

to send you another bullet. It wouldn't take much. In other words, this is what we hire presidents for. It's not something compelled by the Israel lobby or anything else. Of course, the Israel lobby does all sorts of mischief and wrong in getting 57 standing ovations for this murderous leader of Israel and so forth. But the truth is this is a call of the president of the United States and he should make it, the period.

It's actually straightforward. It's not a hard call. The idea that you don't starve two million people is not a hard call. That you don't starve 2 million people is not a hard call. That you don't bomb them to submission. That you don't bomb them out of their homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, clinics, water supply, and then tell them to fly to Libya, for God's sake.

No, this is not how the world's gonna survive. People need to be able to live in their homes without bombs falling on their head. That's basic. And this is why there should be a state of Palestine period. And it's not complicated actually, it's not. Do the Zionists rejoice at Palestinian suffering? Some do for sure, because we see them on TikTok. We see them in the Knesset. I don't think that's true of all Zionists,

but it is true of many who are in power right now. It's also true of rabbis who profess that killing Palestinians is fine. This is contrary to everything I know about Jewish law and Jewish ethics, period. But yes, there is an utter perversion of ethics that's underway right now and it raises another point that I think needs to be explained very carefully. Being against Israel's murderous ways has nothing at all to do with anti-Semitism. Oh but Jeff, the Zionist lobby in America equates the two. It is an immoral, anti-intellectual, baseless equation. NYU, a fine university, not Columbia, but a fine university, refuses to grant the diploma to a graduation speaker because he accused Netanyahu during the graduation speech of committing genocide and

received a standing ovation for it. This is an example of what the Zionists are trying to do in the United States to suppress free speech by painting everybody with an anti-Semitic brush. We know, and there was a story about it in the New York Times and people can find it online, something that was part of so-called Project 2025, which was a project of the Heritage Foundation to guide the Trump administration. And it's a document called Project Esther. And it is a document that essentially claims that opposition to Israel is because of a Hamas lobby and a terrorist lobby and just an obscene bunch of ignorance and viciousness and complete ignorance of the true history of Jewish ideas, which, by the way, have had significant parts of the Jewish community against the Zionist project, by the way.

There's the whole idea that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic period is totally wrong, totally factually without a basis, totally ahistorical. And then moreover, the idea that criticizing an Israeli government, a particular government that is engaged in mass murder is wrong and somehow anti-Semitic is simply the most fatuous, empty, ignorant falsehood that we are being told right now. It's amazing to me. The United States has dispatched a team of FBI agents and federal prosecutors to look for anti-Semitic speech. Does the DOJ have any business under the First Amendment evaluating the content of speech in America?

Well, let me just start on a more basic point. You're our constitutional scholar. My guess is no, absolutely. But let me just say the DOJ hasn't a clue as to what anti-Semitism is, period. They don't know. They've got some total concoction that has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. They conflate it with criticism of Israel. Israel and so-called Zionism is a state project. It is not a religious project. Religious communities, Jewish communities have been against Zionism, have been against the concept. That's true in my neighborhood in New York. We have significant Jewish communities who think that Zionism is completely against

the Jewish law, by the way. So there's so much ignorance on this point. It's amazing. But it's all sloganeering. And it's interestingly, by the way, just as a footnote, a lot of it is coming not from Jews, it's coming from evangelical Christians and their definition. It's coming from biblical literates. Their definition of what this is about, based on a literal reading of the Bible. It's a kind of madness actually, what's going on.

But people don't know and there is no factual base of the claims that are being made. And the equation of anti-Semitism and anti- and protests against the current Israeli government or even against Zionism, there is nothing the same about these. And this has been true for a hundred years. What is antisemitism? Antisemitism is a discrimination against Jews on a basis of their religion, period.

And being against Zionism is against a particular state project. And many rabbis, many of the most learned rabbis, were against the state of Israel. And it's just a fascinating point in Jewish religious thought that there is a large body of thought very deeply established in the Talmud, which is one of the so-called oral laws, sacred texts of Judaism, which says that Jews should not

return en masse to the Holy Land, that that's something that God will command, but Jews in groups should not do that. And based on that, what's called the three oaths in the book of Ketubot in the Babylonian Talmud, for hundreds of years, for nearly 2,000 years, Jewish law was anti-Zionist. It said you live in your communities, you live in your countries. Jews were living all over the world. When Zionism started in the 19th century, it was first of all a claim that Jews should go back to the Holy Land. It wasn't a Jewish idea, it was an evangelical Christian

idea in the early 19th century. That's where modern Zionism started with evangelical Christians. It was picked up by secular Jews at the end of the 19th century and most religious Jews, most rabbis said, but the Talmud says no, that this is against Jewish law. So there's so much confusion and ignorance on very, very basic points that is now completely politicized and incidentally this heritage foundation which makes these documents, this is supported heavily by the evangelical Christian community, not by Jews. So it's a

we're in a mishmash of confusion, judge. Let's switch gears. Did you expect anything to come today out of the two-hour conversation between Presidents Trump and Putin? Yes. It was a good call from what we can gather. I think President Trump is trying to make peace. And he understands that peace, in agreement with President Putin on this,

peace has to come by settling the core reasons for this war. And the most important reason for the Ukraine war was an absolutely dumb project of the American deep state, the CIA and the foreign policy establishment for 30 years to push NATO right up against Russia's nose in Ukraine, as if in our continent it would be like Russia setting up military bases in Mexico or Canada. It just would not happen. But the United States tried that vis-à-vis Russia for 30 years. That's the root cause of this war. And President Trump understands that. President Putin has made the point for decades. And they're trying to find a peace. Then you have

the Ukrainian Zelensky saying, we will be part of NATO. Well, by the way, it's absurd for him to say that because the United States is NATO. The United States is the lead of the Alliance and the United States is saying no, it's not gonna happen because that would put the United States into a direct confrontation with Russia. So the point is the call was made, they talked about how to really end the war, but then the Ukrainians say, no, no, we're going to be

part of NATO, we don't give up any land, we don't do anything, we decide everything, blah, blah, blah, no concessions, we need to defeat Russia. And then a number of European leaders jump up and down, Stammer and Macron and Mertz and Tusk and others. No, no, we must stand with Ukraine to continue to fight Russia. And Trump and Putin are looking at each other and saying, look, this war could end on rational grounds that respects Ukraine's sovereignty and respects Russia's sovereignty and security for both, but it's not gonna end until there's a recognition

that there are security interests on both sides. And the US for a very long time, said, no, there's only security interests on our side. And President Trump recognized that got us into a big mess. And he refers to it as Biden's war. And there's a lot of truth to that. So the fact of the matter is the call was fine, but it doesn't necessarily lead

to peace if there's no realism among a number of the key actors, most important, the Ukrainian regime. And by the way, it's a regime. Zelensky rules by martial law. And so is he reflecting the real interest of the population? Is his view to fight on no matter what, tested at the polls? Do the Ukrainian people really want to continue to lose 1 to 2000 people to deaths and grave injuries every week and to be rounded off the streets and almost kidnappings by these recruiters and sent to the front lines to their death? Is that what they want? Well, we don't know because what we're dealing with is somebody who's operating according to martial law. So it is a little bit frustrating. That's the truth. But

the real fact is this war really could end on absolutely reasonable terms. It could have ended three years ago on reasonable terms. It could end now. And the call, I think from what we can gather, I wasn't on the call, so I'm just guessing, but President Trump said it was a good call, President Putin said it was a good call, and I believe it was a good call. We discussed earlier if there was any pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop the slaughter. Is there any pressure on President Trump to close the spigot of arms that continues to flow as if Joe Biden were still in the White House? Oh, I think the arms are going unimaginable for President Trump to ask Congress

for more funds for this absolutely tragic and absurd idea of fighting to expand NATO to Russia's border. So I don't think he's going to do that and And the funds run out, and the US is going to stop because it has to stop because there's no money in the pipeline. The Europeans are probably going to jump up and down, and Zelensky is going to make demands. And it's a kind of absurd theater, by the way, right now, where every day, almost every day literally, Stammer of the UK, the president of France, Macron, the chancellor of Germany, Mertz, the president, the prime minister of Poland, Tusk, meet with Zelensky.

What is the point? Don't they have other jobs too running their countries? But in any event, they're going to find out there's no U.S. money and arms. And then what are they going to do? Well, Ukraine can say we fight on and they're going to lose more and more territory and more and more lives, or they can make a reasonable peace. And a reasonable peace is available. And it can be negotiated. And not everything the Russians are demanding needs to be accepted.

But a reasonable piece is at hand if they want it. Well, do you think that the Russians would accept anything less than no NATO, Crimea, and the four oblasts that we've all been talking about recognized as part of Russia and Ukraine as a neutral country? I think non-negotiable is no NATO and Ukrainian neutrality. This is the core of the war. Well, and Crimea.

Well, I was just going to get onto the territorial issues. Crimea is absolutely for long and deep reasons, including the attempt of NATO to kind of grab it in 2014. Crimea is not going back. It's been the base for the Russian naval fleet in the Black Sea since 1783. And by the way, it was just a lease that Russia had. Russia wasn't claiming Crimea until the United States, these dunderheads, overthrew a government in 2014 and the new government comes in and says, they don't want Russia and Crimea anymore.

Duh. Well, then the Russians said, sorry, that's where our fleet is. And they arranged the referendum and claimed Crimea. So this is something brought on their heads by the United States project. This is the point. Crimea is not going back. In effect, the eastern Ukraine, which is very heavily ethnic Russian,

Donetsk and Lugansk, they're not going back either. There's again a deep story to all of this that would take us a little bit far afield to go into all the details. But basically, Ukraine blew it between 2014 and 2021 when Russia wasn't demanding those territories at all, but helped to negotiate a treaty in which those ethnically Russian oblasts or regions would have autonomy within Ukraine. And the Ukrainians and the Americans in their stupidity said, no, not good enough. We don't need any autonomy for the ethnic Russian regions, even after a treaty

was signed and voted by the UN Security Council unanimously. This is American arrogance again, and Ukrainian stupidity, I'm sorry to say, blowing it because they had the chance to keep everything, but they couldn't abide by agreements that they reached and that were part of international law as unanimous resolutions of the UN Security Council. So those two are not going back. Then there are two others that I think are more creative things are going to be done in the end. If anyone seriously negotiates, if they don't negotiate, Russia is going to continue to take all this territory and continue to advance on the end. If anyone seriously negotiates, if they don't negotiate, Russia is going to continue to take all this territory and continue to advance on the battlefield. But yes, there are compromises that can be made, there are things that can be done, there are creative solutions that should be

explored right now. That's what diplomats do. And that's what negotiations should be about. And Ukraine has rejected them entirely. The Europeans stupidly reject them now because they're completely lost in all of this story. And President Trump, to his credit, is trying to get this going, actually. Here is a two-minute clip from a much longer interview with Vladimir Medinsky. You may know him. He's the chief Russian negotiator. This is some of the most thoughtful observations I have seen. And his last line is absolutely captivating.

Chris? But unfortunately, the Istanbul process was also disrupted, this time due to the intervention, the direct intervention of the West. And where does this lead? As a rule, as Napoleon used to say, war and negotiations are conducted simultaneously. Stalin proposes an armistice in Finland, that is to make peace. The British and French egg them on. You can't negotiate with the Soviets, you can't make peace. We'll provide you with military assistance.

Volunteer Expeditionary Corps from England and France will come. Naturally, no one actually arrived. After that, peace is concluded and the fighting comes to an end. So what am I getting at? War and negotiations have always gone hand in hand throughout history. Probably the most vivid and instructive example, Peter the Great. Sweden forever lost its status as a great power, and the Russian Empire became a great power.

But just a few years after the war began, Peter the Great offered the Swedes peace. He said, we actually don't need anything. We have access to the Baltic Sea, St. Petersburg, and just a little bit around it, you know, a security zone, and that's all. Historically, these are Russian lands because the entire Leningrad region and most of Karelia are all territories that once belonged to the Novgorod Republic and Sweden had been chopping them off piece by piece.

We know that all of this is our ancestral land, but we're not even asking for it back. Just give us a little, give us freedom and access to the sea. Give us St. Petersburg and the surrounding area and we'll end the war. What do the Swedes say? No, we will fight to the last Swede. Charles XV continues this senseless war despite Peter's repeated offers of peace. But the funniest thing is, who do you think was supporting Charles XI? England and France.

In the end, we agreed to peace negotiations. Russia and Sweden go on for a long time. England and France are putting their foot down. No negotiations. Stop it. Let's do it through intermediaries, through us instead, because it benefits them when two major powers are fighting. In the end, these peace talks led to nothing. And only in 1721, 21 years after the war began, did Sweden finally sign a peace agreement. But it wasn't just St. Petersburg and its surroundings. It was a significant part of Karelia, the Leningrad region, the Baltics, and of course,

St. Petersburg itself. And most importantly, Sweden forever lost its status as a great European power. There you have it. Well, it's about how in such a remarkable way history keeps repeating itself for us. Time used to pass slowly. Now everything is moving much faster. Bismarck, who was an ambassador in St. Petersburg for many years, he always said, never try to deceive the Russians or steal something from them because time will pass. And sooner or later, the Russians always come to reclaim what is theirs.

This reminds me of one of your lectures, Professor Sachs. That's a great history lesson. But the part that I think is absolutely right. The British never stop. The British have been warmongers. The British have been after the Russians since 1840. There's a remarkable book written in 1950 by a historian named Polisin. It's called the Genesis of Russophobia in Britain.

In other words, where did British hatred of Russia come from? And it looks at the dates 1815 to 1840. Why? Because in 1815, Britain and Russia were allies defeating Napoleon. 25 years later, Britain regarded Russia as its mortal enemy. So this historian tries to find out why. And what he discovers after about 450 pages is no reason except Russia was big and the British Empire was unbounded in its arrogance, and it didn't want any other big country, so it came to hate the other big

country. Not because of anything that Russia did, just Britain hated it. And then that led to war in 1853. And I mention that because the Crimean War, 1853 to 1856, was a war that Britain and France fought against Russia to try to banish Russia from the Black Sea. They besieged Sevastopol, the naval base. They did win the war, as it were, in 1856. Russia was banished from the Black Sea for almost 20 years. And why this is important is this was the game plan of Zbigniew Brzezinski and other strategists in the NATO enlargement. Why we are at war in Ukraine right now is that back in the 1990s, these folks had the

idea let's surround Russia on the Black Sea, but let's include Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Georgia. And if people pick up a map and look at what that means, the idea was like Britain and France in the Crimean War, let's banish Russia from the Black Sea. Brzezinski wrote in 1997, Russia can't do anything about it. It's a second rate country. It's going to have to go along with

this expansion of NATO and this expansion of Europe eastward. Of course, he was completely wrong about that and got the United States trapped in this war. Trump is trying to extricate us from this war right now, and he's doing the right thing. And he should do exactly the same, by the way, with Netanyahu, as we talked about,

extricate us from that absolutely obscene war as well. But what's interesting is the British, even though they're not an empire anymore, they still have these fantasies of empire. So Stammer, who's a nobody as far as I can see, deeply disliked by his own population, spends all his time with Zelensky talking about how we're going to defeat Russia. It's just crazy. And this is what we just heard. History just seems to repeat itself over and over again. As Mark said though, first is tragedy and second is farce. And now it's a bit of a farce. What is Europe doing keeping this war going for heaven's sake? How wise was Medinsky to quote Bismarck,

the Russians always reclaim what is theirs. But by the way Bismarck was so clever and kept By the way, Bismarck was so clever and kept Europe from conflagration, which Europe is so prone to doing because they hate each other, they have their memories, they constantly accuse each other of profidity when they've each been on one side or the other attacking the other. And Bismarck had the stable hand throughout most of the second half of the 19th century until he was fired by the young Kaiser Wilhelm II, who then marched his country into complete disaster in the 20 years after he dismissed Bismarck. So you need some stable hands in this, what they're doing.

Professor Sachs, thank you very much. Great history lesson, great analysis, both of the Middle East and Ukraine. I deeply appreciate all you do and thank you very much for your time, my dear friend. Great to be with you, we'll see you next week. Yes, thank you. A great, great, brilliant and gifted conversation. Tomorrow Tuesday, Ambassador Charles Freeman at 8 30 in the morning, Patrick Lancaster live from India at the India-Pakistani border at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. At 11 o'clock, my longtime friend, the great Ralph Nader. At two o'clock in the afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor. At three in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski.

A full day for you. Thank you for watching Judging the Politano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC