Read the full transcript of economist and public policy analyst Prof. Jeffrey Sachs’ interview on Judging Freedom Podcast with host Judge Napolitano on “Is Israel/Hamas Deal For Real?”, October 9, 2025.
The Ceasefire Agreement and Its Implications
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, October 9, 2025. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us now. Professor Sachs, thank you very much. Double duty this week and I know it’s late in the day where you are, very much appreciated. Let’s get right to this. What is your take on the Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Tony Blair, Gaza plan?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Well, apparently there will be a ceasefire. That could be a sustained ceasefire and that is very good news. Maybe the fighting is going to stop. Israel has murdered 67,000 people since it attacked Gaza on October 8, following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. 67,000 people is a lot.
It has starved hundreds of thousands of people as well, and many children dying just on a daily basis right now because of starvation. So maybe this will end with a ceasefire, an exchange of hostages held in Gaza by Hamas and other militia forces and hostages held by Israel in much larger numbers. Hostages seized by Israel in Gaza and other Palestinians as well. Maybe up to 2,000 will be released in this deal.
This is said to be the end of the fighting. Maybe Israel has exhausted itself. It certainly has exhausted the patience of the world with this mass genocidal bloodletting that it has been on for the last two years now.
All the rest of the so-called peace plan is not agreed. It will never be agreed. We’re only after the fighting stops going to enter into the real politics of this. And the politics are very straightforward. Israel, with US backing, has rejected a state of Palestine for decades.
The world community overwhelmingly for decades has called for a state of Palestine. The UN General Assembly by massive votes, with more than 90% of the world community in countries voting yes, have called for a state of Palestine on multiple occasions in recent years, including just a couple of weeks ago.
Beyond the Ceasefire: The Real Political Issues
This plan, so-called, isn’t really a plan beyond what has happened today or apparently will happen in these hours. There’s a lot of gobbledygook, but there’s no resolution of the core political issues. There’s a lot of spin and fluff and bluff and Donald Trump to be king of the Palestinians and lots of weird things that aren’t going to happen.
The question is, will there be a state of Palestine? Will the United States try, as it has for decades, to divide, suppress, scare, bribe, twist arms of the Arab world to Israel’s will? Or will the Arab world finally, after basically a century of abuse by the British and the Americans starting at the end of World War I until today, will the Arab world finally stand up and say enough is enough?
We’re not going to be bullied, bribed, twisted again with yet another defeat of basic political rights of the Palestinian people. So all of that is to come today. It appears maybe there’s enough exhaustion, enough disgust, enough global pressure that Israel’s genocide is ending today. At least we have to hope so.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Prime Minister Netanyahu’s goal, of course, has been the eradication of the Palestinian people from Gaza. Hamas’s goal has been to survive and stay relevant. Many of your colleagues on this show today who share your and my and our viewers’ views of the genocide have said this is a setback for Netanyahu. Hamas survives, something he vowed would never happen. Do you view it this way? Can you see it through that lens, Professor Sachs?
The Role of Hamas in the Conflict
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: I never really thought this had much to do with Hamas. That was a convenient bumper sticker for a genocidal maniac driving his military through Gaza on a mass murder campaign. Hamas is one of the militant groups that has been fighting Israel’s occupation of Palestine. It’s one of them.
In the context of a state of Palestine really being created alongside Israel on the borders of June 4, 1967, that is, with a real state of Palestine being created according to international law and the will of the international community, Hamas would not be an obstacle to peace. It’s not an independent actor. It gets funded and it gets armed by those who are calling for a state of Palestine.
If a state of Palestine is actually achieved, Hamas does not play any central role in this drama. So I think all of this incessant focus on Hamas has been kind of a talisman or a way for Israel to talk itself into a flagrant, open genocide of the Palestinian people.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Why is Jared Kushner involved? Is he going to become the developer of Trump Riviera? That’s what he does for a living. His huge, upscale, billion dollar, well-financed real estate developments.
Corruption and Self-Dealing in the Trump Administration
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Everything’s possible in our weird world. We have more flagrant corruption, self-dealing, insider dealing that basically goes without notice in this world. Just about everyone swarming around the Trump world operates with the insider dealing, corruption, nepotism. Maybe different flavors for different people, but that’s par for the course of the Trump White House.
Everybody understands it. It’s surely disgusting. If we lived in a normal time and had a normal country, which we don’t have anymore, alas, none of this would happen. So yes, lots of people are no doubt scheming one way or another. How can they get rich on the back of a mass murder?
Lots of American companies have gotten quite rich, by the way, selling cloud services and AI and genocidal targeting to the Israeli Defense Forces. So this has been a good year for Silicon Valley, which is all over this mass murder in Gaza.
No doubt Jared Kushner wants to build, build, build things too. And no doubt there are a lot of other grifters and crooks around who will want to take advantage.
Well, what I think though is important is it’s just actually possible that something better happens and that it’s not dictated any longer by a pathetic United States. Not just the Trump White House, but a United States which for decades has abetted Israel’s extremism.
Maybe this will end not because the United States is any better, certainly not because Israel has any self-reflection, but truly the whole rest of the world is just disgusted by Israel, just disgusted by what has happened. You have marches all over Europe of hundreds of thousands of people in Amsterdam, in Italy. As I arrived here to see a national strike, in essence, in favor of the Palestinians.
This is happening all over the world and this is what might change things. Not Jared Kushner or Donald Trump.
The Question of Trust
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Why would any Middle Eastern group, Palestinian or otherwise, trust Netanyahu and the Israelis to comply with this? Why would Hamas—I know you think Hamas is not the most significant player here—but why would whoever is negotiating on behalf of the Gazans give up their leverage because of a promise from Netanyahu? He is not only the world’s great monster, he’s the world’s great liar.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Well, the one that one can question about trust is the United States, because nobody trusts Netanyahu. Hamas or anybody else is not acting on the basis of trust of Netanyahu. You can be absolutely sure of that.
The agreement that has been reached has been reached with the United States, Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries. Now, the United States cheats all the time and it could cheat again. But Hamas is basically, I think, not only exhausted because of mass slaughter and the Palestinians actually want something to eat before the mass starvation carries them away.
So they want the fighting to stop, but they’re hoping for the fact that this isn’t a matter of trust with Netanyahu. It’s not a deal with Netanyahu, and it’s not really a deal only with the United States. They’re trusting that with the countries that I mentioned—Egypt and Turkey and Qatar and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and others as signing on to this—that at least the fighting will stop. That’s what they’re counting on.
They’re not disarming right now, so they’re not giving it full trust in any way. There’s no political agreement in any of this. This is a call to stop the bloodletting.
The 50-to-1 Ratio
One hint that may play some role here is the fact that early on the Israelis decided that they would commit mass slaughter, and they would commit mass slaughter to terrorize the people of Gaza and perhaps make them flee so that they could continue their permanent rule.
And the former head of the Israeli military intelligence actually said, and he was caught on tape, and it became quite notorious, or maybe not notorious because nothing’s notorious in Israel, but it became discussed in Israel in recent months. He said at the beginning that for every Israeli that died, 50 Palestinians should be killed.
And according to standard counts, between 1,200 and 1,300 Israelis died one way or another from the October 7th attack. And if you multiply the 50-to-1 ratio, you reach a targeted death toll by these mass murderers of something around 64,000 deaths. Well, they reached that number in the last few weeks.
So maybe they calculate that their mass bloodletting has been accomplished and now there’s no more purpose to continue bloodletting. It could actually be this, because this 50-to-1 ratio was widely discussed. And there’s a certain primitiveness in the Israeli mentality, I have to say.
There’s a certain degree to which Israel acts like a 10th century BC theocratic state. And we know from the Old Testament that that state committed repeated genocides. And I think a lot of Israeli leaders think in that primitive way. And so this may be an explanation.
Also, the bloodletting went on. The 50-to-1 ratio was reached. And so why not stop? And we don’t really know why, because the thousands and tens of thousands of deaths had no purpose either. This ceasefire could have been reached two years ago.
Netanyahu actually said that Hamas as a fighting force was basically ended soon after the Israeli invasion of Gaza. So most of what has happened since then has been a sheer bloodletting. And it’s vile, it’s repulsive, it’s genocidal, it’s against international law. But maybe it was following a 50-to-1 formula and they filled their quota of death.
How Israel Has Changed
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: We are running a poll. Do you believe this plan, the ceasefire peace plan, holds? Yes, no, undecided. You got a few more minutes to vote before Professor Sachs and I part ways for the day. I’ll give you the results of the poll. How has Israel suffered in the past two years? How is it different today, October 9, 2025, than it was on October 6, 2023?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: I think the tragic part for us and for Israel is a lot of Israeli society has really become deranged. The mindset and the mentality has been kind of bloodlust. So Netanyahu in some ways acted against public opinion because he did not pursue the release of the remaining Israeli hostages with any care. He was much more interested in genocide than he was in getting the hostages released.
But there is, I’m sorry to say it, no evidence that in Israeli society there has been any widespread concern about the genocide itself. All of the rhetoric and the attention and the focus and the marches have been about, say, the 20 remaining Israeli hostages. Israel holds at least 2,000 Palestinian hostages, by the way. No one in Israel would care at all about this.
But there’s been almost no discussion in Israeli society about the mass killing of Palestinians. To me, this is the number one fact of the last couple of years. There’s been not a moment that I have seen of Israel coming to grips with its murderous approach and the fact that it has become a despised nation in the world for understandable reasons. This is not understood at all.
Of course, the costs of war, the dislocations, the hundreds of thousands of people from Israel who have left the country, who see no future there, those are very heavy costs. But for me, the societal costs of a country that cheered on a genocide and to this moment can’t reflect honestly on it is tragic beyond measure for what it means for that society.
I don’t want to compare it with the actual suffering of the Palestinians, which is vastly greater. But for Israel, it’s a kind of destruction of Israel as a normal society. It will take years or decades to overcome this, and there’s not even a start of that at this moment.
Netanyahu’s Cabinet and the Far Right
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Do you think that Netanyahu willingly accepted this deal? Do you think his cabinet will accept it? Do you think Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and the fanatic right-wingers will accept it?
Distinguishing Ceasefire from Peace Plan
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Well, I think again, it’s important to distinguish two very different things. One is a stopping of the fighting right now, the release of the hostages, emergency aid, before there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people starving to death. I think that there is a reasonable chance that this can go into effect.
Then there is the rest about the future. I think there’s no chance that the rest can go into effect because the rest of this 20 point plan is a bunch of nonsense. Actually, it’s not a plan at all. It’s not been agreed by anybody.
There’s only one way to have peace. If you want it right now, if you want peace, it is what the overwhelming majority of the international world, the international community has said and the International Court of Justice and decades of international law. And that is a state of Palestine alongside a state of Israel.
The Two-State Solution Debate
By the way, many people say, why should there ever be that? There should be one state because Israel has proven itself incapable of being a civil society and so forth. All I would say is if people believe in that, perfectly understandable that people would have that view. I don’t object to it in some principle way. I just don’t think that it is at all what can bring peace.
There are 8 million Israeli Jews right now. There are 8 million Palestinian Arabs. They each need their place to live and trust and living together. God help us, it should come, but it’s going to take years or decades.
But right now we need peace and we need Israel to end its slaughter and its repression of the Palestinian people. And the one thing that is immediately at hand is the fact, as I’ve said, that more than 90% of the world is in countries that say two states, do it.
The Path Forward
Now we know the borders. That’s international law. That could happen tomorrow if Trump would change American policy, the big if, if the United States could have its own foreign policy. That’s what we’re really waiting for.
And so if you ask me, will today’s ceasefire hold for a while? It could, but it’s not a peace plan. Let’s have no confusion about that. And the next steps depend on real politics and depend on the world will and international law prevailing over the United States being in the hands of the Zionist lobby. This is what it’s going to take to bring peace.
Poll Results and Final Thoughts
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Right before I let you go, the results of the poll. Do you believe this plan holds? Yes, 6%. Undecided, 12%. No, 82%. Professor Sachs, surprised again.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: We have to check the semantics. Could the fighting stop for a while? I think it can. Is this a plan for peace? Of course not. It’s not even a plan. So in that sense, your voters, your viewers are very well informed indeed and are on, have the right understanding. But at least a temporary peace gives us the chance to get American foreign policy back in American hands.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Thank you, Professor Sachs. I know it’s late in the day where you are and I know this is your second time around with us.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: But always, always a pleasure.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Thank you, everybody deeply appreciates it. All the best. We’ll see you next week.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Great. Thanks a lot.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Thank you, my friend.
Related Posts
