Jeffery Sachs critiques US policy in Ukraine and in Israel

Throughout their whole discussion neither referenced Oct 7th nor questioned whether a TSS would bring peace. The latter was a given.

By Ted Belman

The first 23 minutes of this interview was spent on Sach’s criticism of US policy regarding the Ukraine War and then the Judge segued to Israel and Gaza enabling Sach’s to continue his criticism of the Biden team and its policies.

I was familiar with his stand on Ukraine because it mirrored mine.  I had watched a number of his videos on the subject and was familiar with his criticism.

In this video he shows his disgust with US policy because “there  was no active diplomacy”.  In its place, the US was “acting recklessly and dangerously”.  “They lie on everything” he said.

The Judge asked him about the West authorizing attacks inside Russia.  He said it was “extremely dangerous”.

Regarding Russia’s red lines, he said “they don’t bluff”.

And if you dare to question the US, people call you a “Putin troll or a Russian troll”.  Where have I heard that before?

When asked why the West hates Russia, he said “At the end of the Soviet Union, The Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney said, “[the Russians]  don’t want Communism any more, maybe Russia should be dismembered too”.  That became US policy and remains so today.

Israel

The Judge started out by referring to ”the slaughter that was going on in Gaza”. How can he be so ignorant? It has been proven repeatedly that there is no slaughter or genocide in Gaza. In fact Israel has the lowest kill ratio of any war previously by a factor of at least five.

Surprisingly he spoke respectfully about Ben Gvir and Smotich.

The Saudi FM said on May27/24

“Israel doesn’t get to decide if the Palestinians have a right to self-determination”

“This is something that is enshrined in the UN Charter.”

“It is something that is enshrined in international law.”

“It is also a founding principle in the UN decision to found Israel”

The Judge called it “an accurate presentation of history” and Sachs added “What he said was absolutely correct”.

I got news for all of them, none of it is true. Why so?

Self determination

UN Charter Article 1 (2) establishes that “one of the main purposes of the United Nations, and thus the Security Council, is to develop friendly international relations based on respect for the “principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”.

This is a principle only and does not guarantee the Palestinians/Arabs, the right of self-determination.

But the PLO/PA has bound itself by signing the Oslo Accords.

The Oslo Accords, Article XXX,  pragraphs 7 and 8 provide:

    1. Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.
    2. The two Parties view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, the integrity and status of which will be preserved during the interim period.

UN Charter

It does nothing more than “respect the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”.

But it does provide in Article 80 that “nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.” This makes Jewish rights acquired previously, inviolable.

This Article takes precident over the principle above stated.

International law

There is no universally accepted agreement as to the content of the right to self-determination, it is agreed that at a minimum, it entails the entitlement of peoples to have control over their destiny and to be treated respectfully.

The UN acts in violation of International Law while claiming to uphold it 

International law and the State of Israel 

Israel is the legal owner of all lands west of the Jordan R.

Israel’s rights are rooted in the Balfour Declaration, San Remo Resolution and the British Mandate, all of which gave the land west of the Jordan to Israel.  The Arabs refused to accept this. Many in Europe refused to accept it also. They didn’t want to be bound by the law. Instead they ignored the law and got the UN to do so too.

The conspiracy to shrink Israel

Founding principle

Res 181 of the UNGA simply recommended a two state solution which also violated Israel’s right to all of it.

It did not create the state of Israel, Ben Gurion’s Declaration of Indepence did.

Throughout their whole discussion neither referenced Oct 7th nor questioned whether a TSS would bring peace. The latter was a given.

They don’t know that Israel also favors a TSS, Israel and Palestine (formerly Jordan) living peacefully with the Jordan River separating them.

This, in essence, is the Jordan Option

June 15, 2024 | 20 Comments »

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20 Comments / 20 Comments

  1. It follows that I deeply regret that Israel is not taking any position. One of the perils of single issue nationalism and even Israel is bankrupt in moment of great peril

  2. An article in today’s Telegraph is full of lies and I quote one paragraph

    “It is my view that while the Kremlin will use Western support for Ukraine as a pretext for nuclear escalation, much like how Russia used Nato expansion to justify invading Ukraine in February 2022, Western support will not trigger it. Instead, Vladimir Putin’s decision to press Russia’s nuclear button will likely be shaped by the coalescence of three factors. ”

    It contains an error or lie of history. No Russia sent a limited number of troops into Ukraine as part of the key strategy promoted by the UN of Responsibility to Protect R2P

    There was a genocide in action and issue was speaking russian language. The Nazis we know we’re as hateful and essentially as petty as that against their own Ukrainian people.

    There are some of these lies that only went are able to answer small as we are

    Shows me we can answer but we have to do it big time

    We have to get our facts correct

  3. (cont.)

    Only one road to salvation was possible and very necessary. What was this clear road? Answer written very large Responsibility 2 Protect. That is to carry out the all too real necessity to wage the struggle for R2P. Everything was now in the open. These countries of Europe plus US had engineered a massacre now befalling Russian speaking people.

    Right is on your side. Act! Act now this moment!

    1. Build the revolutionary socialist party to take up the long delayed ideological battle against Fascism
    2. Invade to drive this emergence of Fascists to the hell that awaited them. Hell that they had earned!

    As we know Putin could do none of these. And the reason why must be answered because it IS the issue of our times. Though it is not an easy answer to arrive at because it is to be found deep within history. In a word how to confront and defeat Fascism?

  4. Act now in the full flush of time. Time for decision?

    Putin is not a Stalin figure and his period of rule has no resemblance to that cruel dictator either. Yet I wish to show severe weaknesses which have caused the present crisis, which are located within a continuity of history. Putin self admittedly has not broken from Stalinism.

    What was Putin confronted with when he came to lead Russia? Stalinism had folded in absolute crisis handing enormous control back to capitalism. Facing such…Putin had an idea in the goodness of humanity prevailing.

    Capitalism took advantage of the naivity of Putin. It did not budge one inch from its aim of bringing Russia to its knees by means of creating an ideologically hostile state on its boundary and also extension of NATO so Russia was surrounded into the east along a northern border.

    The previous quite foundational treaty connected to nuclear control had a clause carefully written in that the treaty was valid only so long as enemies of Russia did not attack.

    This was broken in spades when the corpulent figure of Victoria Nuland descended on Ukraine and sprang a very violent coup d’etat, dividing and paralysing the country, handing power to the long existing Nazis, with roots in the carrying through of the Holocaust, same as the Mufti then present in Berlin and nearby Balkans.

  5. Thank you Raphael for your views on Ukraine War. I oppose any military aid to Ukraine from America. THe CIA has too long taken upon itself to reinvent or coop foreign nations. That is not supposed to be its mandate! It has no civilian oversight and a very deep pocket to do what it alone decides. Where is Congressional responsibility? Of course, we all know the Deep State has taken over America and the oligarchs are in control. Alas Babylon.

  6. Act now in the full flush of time. Time for decision?

    Putin is not a Stalin figure and his period of rule has no resemblance to that cruel dictator either. Yet I wish to show severe weaknesses which have caused the present crisis, which are located within a continuity of history.

    What was Putin confronted with when he came to lead Russia? Stalinism had folded in absolute crisis handing enormous control back to capitalism. Facing such…Putin had an idea in the goodness of humanity prevailing.

    Capitalism took advantage of the naivity of Putin. It did not budge one inch from its aim of bringing Russia to its knees by means of creating an ideologically hostile state on its boundary and also extension of NATO so Russia was surrounded into the east along a northern border.

    The previous quite foundational treaty connected to nuclear control had a clause carefully written in that the treaty was valid only so long as enemies of Russia did not attack.

    This was broken in spades when the corpulent figure of Victoria Nuland descended on Ukraine and sprang a very violent coup d’etat, dividing and paralysing the country, handing power to the long existing Nazis, with roots in the carrying through of the Holocaust, same as the Mufti then present in Berlin and nearby Balkans.

    Only one road to salvation was possible and very necessary. What was this clear road? Answer written very large Responsibility 2 Protect. That is to carry out the all too real necessity to wage the struggle for R2P. Everything was now in the open. These countries of Europe plus US had engineered a massacre now befalling Russian speaking people.

    Right is on your side. Act! Act now this moment!

    1. Build the revolutionary socialist party to take up the long delayed ideological battle against Fascism
    2. Invade to drive this emergence of Fascists to the hell that awaited them. Hell that they had earned!

    As we know Putin could do none of these. And the reason why must be answered because it IS the issue of our times. Though it is not an easy answer to arrive at because it is to be found deep within history. In a word how to confront and defeat Fascism?

  7. @Adam

    There was no CIA coup…

    Well, Mike Benz disagrees with your perspective on color revolutions, and given that he was personally involved in the color revolution perpetrated against Belarus, you might want to give him a listen:
    https://www.israpundit.org/mike-benz-benzotation-research-stream-4-bringing-down-a-dictator/

    “Furthermore, if the US was not behind the US orchestrated coup in 2014, how is it that the US Asst Sec. of State was positioned to actually name the members of the govt which came out of that coup, weeks before the coup actually took place. Note, she wasn’t reporting who would be in the govt, but was in fact making the decision of who would be in and who would be out in the recording released two weeks before. Let’s take a look at just a bit of what Nuland stated in that conversation:
    “I think we’re in play. The Klitschko [Vitaly Klitschko was one of the opposition leaders] piece is obviously the complicated electron here. Especially the announcement of him as deputy prime minister and you’ve seen some of my notes on the troubles in the marriage right now so we’re trying to get a read really fast on where he is on this stuff. But I think your argument to him, which you’ll need to make, I think that’s the next phone call you want to set up, is exactly the one you made to Yats [Arsenyi Yatsenuk was another opposition leader]. And I’m glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario. And I’m very glad that he said what he said in response.”

    This recording was released weeks before the coup took place, and it was obviously recorded at sometime prior to that. So if it was not an American operation which was coordinating the coup, by what power might the Americans be dictating the political outcome of that coup? Again, give a listen to role played by the American Oligarchs in fashioning and benefiting from the American orchestrated coup in Ukraine:
    https://www.israpundit.org/the-cia-the-oil-gas-industry-hunter-biden-the-coup-in-ukraine/

    It would be interesting to hear you explain how America controlled the political outcome of the coup, as well as succeeding in gaining the control of Ukraine’s commodities, if they were not in fact involved in the coup which brought about both of these things in the same moment, and which Nuland discussed would take place weeks before they took place.

  8. France is schuduled to have a “snap” parliamentary election in a few days. But the Trotskyists led by Malenchon are sending goons with their faces masked who carry hammers and /or truncheons, who brutally assault the “extreme” rightist candidates supporting Le Pen, and even the election judges, hoping to have the election declared void if the National Rally (le Pen) wins. This is the Trotskyist-leftist notion of ‘democracy.”

  9. There was no CIA coup but a popular revolution by the Ukrainian masses against elecoral fraud and Russian imperialism. The left’s, including the Trotskyists, alliance with Putin’s clericalist-imperialist-nationalist regime is both shocking and self-destructive. But remember, the Trotskyists refused to join the war against Hitler 1939-45, terming it an imperialist war. Plus ca change, plus lameme chose . . .”

  10. Bandera Racism Pure and Simple

    Post Coup of the pivotal racist measure banning the language, the genocidal attacks shelling the Russian speaking civilians, the revising of the history of Ukraine using the CIA agency of Applebaum and Tim Snyder, the use of Azov and Right Sector at the Front…

    And still it’s a fact that the Russian speakers of eastern Ukraine wanted to remain in a united Ukraine with a strong autonomy safeguarding once again their rights to speak Russian.

    It is telling that the language issue infuriated the Fascist leadership all of whom emerged out of the Maidan Coup. That was the origins of the war. Language was a cultural issue but in true Fascist language it had to be followed by Nazi Stepan Bandera blood and guts.

    The Fascists as in Guernica vented hatred on the civilians, really the traditional workers of the mines. They were miners. (On the spot evidence Eve Ann Bartlett, Patrick Lancaster)

    Not a weapon entered Ukraine from Putin. In fact even though buoyed up by their sordid CIA driven coup the Ukrainian army was a mess. It needed time and money to reorganise. This was the role of the CIA. The army was their creation. It was also that Putin turned now to diplomacy as the elites of Europe began to feel they had their man Putin where they wanted him.

  11. @Raphael
    I wanted to thank you for your well explained rational upon which your perspective is based.

  12. Following the coup 2014

    The deadly nature of the new regime brought in over the heads of the whole people of Ukraine was made clear in the very first law that was passed

    This was the repeal of the 2012 Kivalov-Koleshchenko law, which made Russian the official language, on February 23, 2014, the first measure of the new legislature post Coup. A little like forcing the Protestants of Northern Ireland to speak only Gaelic.

    Remember this must have been terrifying for the ethnic Russians. Guess that’s when the war started.

    Swiftly followed by the new president…shelling civilians in the Russian speaking areas.

    Again we have the video

  13. @ Laura Here’s my take on why it is right to be “for” Israel, and at the same time “against” Ukraine.

    I won’t take much time to explain my position on Israel, except to say I believe that Israel (and the Jews) have been on the right side of history, since long before 1948. Presumably everyone on this site feels the same way, so no further explanations are needed. It is a very long story anyway.

    Understanding why I think being pro-Russian and anti-Ukraine is correct needs some explanation. NATO’s post 1999 history is one of expansion, with the intent of encroaching on Russia proper, and of not listening to Russia’s legitimate security concerns. One look at a map is all you need to understand that point. Russia finally took action to slow NATO’s advance by intervening in Georgia in 2008 and by annexing Crimea in 2014.

    Let’s talk about Crimea. Ethnically and historically it is Russian, yet from 2013, the US had plans to bring Ukraine into NATO, and to take over the Russian Naval base at Sevastopol. This which would put NATO forces on Russia’s doorstep, (within easy strike range), effectively surrounding Russia on the West and bottling up Russia’s Black Sea fleet. This is something that Russia could not stand for, (nor would we if the situation was reversed). Putin’s course of action was to take Crimea off the board, (a good chess move). This was basically a no-brainer, because the people of Crimea already thought of themselves as Russians, anyway.

    Since shortly after the founding of our country, the United States has interfered in the internal affairs of countries. (Maybe they all do it, huh?), but true to form, in 2014 the CIA instigated the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, during which anti-Russian riots caused the resignation (and flight) of the popularly elected Viktor Yanukovytch. Yanukovytch called it a coup and asked the Russians for help. At the same time, pro-Russian demonstrations broke out in the eastern 1/3 of Ukraine. Thus began the Ukrainian civil war. Ukraine increased its oppression of ethnic Russians, and undertook direct attacks on its own citizens, with the indiscriminate shelling of cities in the Donbas killing perhaps as many as 14,000 people between 2014 and 2022. Russia did not directly intervene until 2022, but finally felt obliged to come to the aid of the besieged Russian population, and to prevent the admittance of Ukraine into NATO. It was a war that was thrust upon it, that could have been prevented had not the West been hell-bent on defeating Russia and expanding NATO to the doors of Moscow. This is the CIA’s and NATO’s war, and they are determined to fight it to the last Ukrainian. This is evil. Unfortunately for the West, they over-played their hand, and they are going to lose big-time, not only in Ukraine, but on the world stage as well.

    Now, I have to add this as my own personal reason for supporting Russia. You undoubtedly are aware of the devastation that the Left/DeepState/Democrats have wrought on our country. America is a troubled and ugly place. It is not the same country that I grew up in. Vladimir Putin has been vehemently demonized since 2014, or before, however, I have learned enough about the man to respect him. He is learned and self-controlled; he hates “wokeness”, and he is even a religious man. He has offered peace to the West time and time again, but the fools in Washington and Europe keep turning him down. Lastly, I believe that Vladimir Putin loves his fellow countrymen and is acting in a way that he sees as in their best interests. This is the opposite of the corrupt politicians and oligarchs who are oppressing the good people of America. I see Vladimir Putin as a “type” of what a leader ought to be.

    Thank you for reading this.

  14. It’s quite simple. They are all on the same side of the axis of evil and oppose America, Israel and the west. I keep trying to figure out why anyone pro-Israel would be backing Russia.

    I used to respect the Judge and Jeffery Sachs very highly. They are both correct when it comes to Ukraine. Unfortunately, they both show themselves to be antisemitic when it comes to Israel’s struggle in Gaza. I don’t follow either of them any more. There are numerous others with this same strange dichotomy. I don’t get it

  15. It’s not surprising that every one of these apologists for Russia also happens to be anti-Israel. Yet Ted still doesn’t make the connection. Ted, apparently you hate Ukraine so much or are such a Russophile for whatever reason that you are willing to overlook the anti-Israel rhetoric from these people.

  16. I used to respect the Judge and Jeffery Sachs very highly. They are both correct when it comes to Ukraine. Unfortunately, they both show themselves to be antisemitic when it comes to Israel’s struggle in Gaza. I don’t follow either of them any more. There are numerous others with this same strange dichotomy. I don’t get it

  17. The judge is constantly on the anti-Israel bandwagon. Sachs. Giraldi. Ritter the perv. Mearsheimer. A conga line of Israel-haters with their noses up each others ass.

  18. Jeffery Sachs is a lifelong Communist. I think it is wrong that he has been , or was, a professor at NYU for many years. There are too many Marxists with professorships ar American universities.