Tucker Carlson Interviews Jeffrey Sachs on Israeli Election (Transcript)

Once again, the only democracy in The Middle East. So let’s just restate what democracy is because it might be helpful as a reference point here. Democracy is a system of government in which the citizens of the country own the country, and the government exists only to do what they want, to preserve their rights and to respond to their concerns. They own the country by virtue of their citizenship, not by virtue of their race or their religion or who their parents were, but by virtue of their status as citizens of that country.

And that we are told is what makes Israel so different from the terrifying police states on its borders like Jordan and Lebanon. Okay. Now that’s, of course, the only… That’s the kind of lie you could only tell to people who’ve never been to any of those countries and will believe anything. Right?

Which is most people because anyone who’s been to any of those countries knows it’s an absurd lie. It’s absurd lie, which becomes immediately evident the second you go there and see it. No. It’s not a police state actually in Jordan. It’s really nice.

Nicer than most parts of The United States, actually. But leaving that aside, the question of citizenship in Israel, which is a status that applies equally to all people in Israel who live in Israel, are permanent residents of Israel, citizenship, a recognizably western concept. The fact that Israel has a system based on citizenship is, again, the pretext for American support for Israel. We support Israel because they’re just like us. They’re an outpost of western civilization in the Near East.

They’re not some creepy genocidal ethnostate that kills people for having the wrong DNA. No. That’s what the Nazis did. And we’re all officially against that and especially Israel because Israel was created in response to what the Nazis did. So they’re exhibit a in how you run a country because they learned lessons from what the Nazis did, which to restate in case you missed that history lesson was isolate first, attack second, try to expel third, and finally murder people within its borders beginning in Germany because they had the wrong DNA, because they were the wrong race or ethnicity, because, well, in that case, they were Jews.

So that is always and everywhere wrong. I mean, there’s one lesson of the Second World War. It’s that. That’s just wrong. Doesn’t matter who commits it.

It’s an absolute standard. It is always wrong in every time in history. There really is one lesson of the entire twentieth century of our modern society. It’s all based on that idea. And, again, the defense of Israel has been based on the claim that Israel is upholding that universal standard uniquely in The Middle East.

None of the other countries are, but Israel is. It’s a democracy. So it’s a little weird to hear one of Israel’s most faithful cheerleaders in The United States just casually admit that’s not true. That the problem with the most recent Israeli elections, and, again, this was yesterday as votes were still being cast. There was Mark Levin encouraging more non Arabs to cast them.

Right in the middle of that, Mark Levin just casually admits, oh, wait. Arabs might have an effect on the outcome of the election, not Hamas, Israeli Arab citizens. In other words, our democracy might function as democracies are intended to function, and that would be a disaster because it might undercut the project, which is not a democratic project. The project is building an ethnostate based on your DNA, not on your beliefs, on your DNA. Because, of course, if it was based on your beliefs, there would be a religious test to move to Israel, but there’s not. There’s an effective genetic test. You have to have a mother who’s connected to the project, so it’s by your blood. So that’s an ethnostate.

Israel as an Ethnostate

Now you could argue nations have a right to construct ethnostates if they want, and Israel’s not the only ethnostate in history.

That’s for certain. In fact, through history, most states have been ethnostates. In fact, until recently, almost all states have been ethnostates. So you could argue that that’s a term that’s been maligned in the wake of the Second World War, but you can’t argue that the existence of an ethnostate is acceptable to the leaders of western countries because they spend the rest of their day when they’re not defending this ethnostate in The Middle East, attacking the idea of an ethnostate and denying their citizens the right to create ethnostates. That’s the whole project.

So it’s a little bit weird. And here you have Mark Levin sort of casually admitting that, no. It’s not really democracy because when it functions as intended, we have to stop it. We can’t let the Arabs take control. The people who live here who’ve been here longer than we have, they can’t have control of the country.

Oh. So then you think, well, okay. That’s Mark Levin. What does he know? He’s got a weekend show on Fox.

He’s not really an arbiter of anything important. He’s just a blowhard, an increasingly unhappy looking blowhard shooting videos of himself as he walks down the… Shuffles down the sidewalk. So maybe within Israel at the level of the people who run it, people are more diplomatic and aren’t saying things like that out loud. Because when you say things like that out loud, you kind of give away your future plans, which is to commit pogroms, of course.

Whenever you have a leader of a country identifying a group as evil based on its blood, you can be certain that if unchecked, that leader will continue down the inevitable path toward killing them. Right? I mean, isn’t this the lesson of Der Stürmer? By the way, the editor of Der Stürmer was executed after the Second World War. That was, of course, the Nazi affiliated paper that identified Jews as evil, not just because of what they did, but because who they were.

No one ever pretended that that guy hurt anybody, but his words alone were considered so vile and so critical to the process of genocide that he was executed by the allies, which is to say by the people who adjudicated those trials, which included judges from The United States and The Soviet Union. So we know that language like that is bad. We know that, and we’ve been teaching our kids that for, well, eighty years. So it would be a surprise if within Israel, the political class whose salaries we effectively pay for here in The United States were saying similar or really even more florid things. So let’s check in on the still current prime minister of the state of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s been on and off the prime minister for thirty years.

Netanyahu Says Arab Parties “Stole” the Election

And as the votes began to be tallied and the exit polls analyzed today, it became clear that he had not won a clear victory and that he hadn’t, according to most analysis because the Arab parties, which represent about 20% of Israel’s population, of the population of Israeli citizens who have a right to vote and participate in the political process because it’s, again, a democracy, the only democracy in The Middle East, it became clear that they were not voting for Benjamin Netanyahu because, I mean, just guessing, maybe they were, I don’t know, unimpressed by the genocide to their south in Gaza. I mean, who knows? Just kind of throwing that out there. But in any case, they didn’t vote for Netanyahu according to exit polls. So here’s Netanyahu’s response, and we’re quoting now.

And this is publicly available on X. Quote, “The elections in the state of Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries, and the use of prohibited software to mobilize voters.” Let’s just stop there. Prohibited software to mobilize voters? What kind of software could be prohibited to mobilize voters? In what democratic system is it ever prohibited to mobilize voters to encourage your fellow citizens to express their preference at the polls? We’re not even sure what that means, but the idea itself doesn’t sound a lot like democracy at all. In any case, he went on. The election has been stolen by the Arabs.

Quote, “We demand from the police and the Shin Bet,” which is the internal security service, the secret police, “a thorough investigation into the election theft by the Arab parties and the full prosecution of the criminals. This is a serious blow to Israeli democracy and the voting rights of Israeli citizens. The law enforcement agencies must act with an iron fist and in an immediate manner.” In other words, let’s have a pogrom because that’s what he’s calling for. This is a threat to the voting rights of Israeli citizens.

Well, the people in question, the Arabs are Israeli citizens, which is why they voted in the first place. And Netanyahu’s complaint is that they didn’t vote for him, and therefore, they are supporters of terrorism. And therefore, their voting itself is a crime. Now to their credit, there are people because this is a contested election within Israel, a few who’ve pointed out that this is genocidal language. This is insane.

In fact, the whole idea behind that post is totally incompatible with Western civilization or its understanding of justice. The idea that an election is invalid just because people whose ancestors I don’t like voted in it is not something that we would accept in The United States or that most American citizens have any interest in paying for, though they are against their will. But that was Benjamin Netanyahu’s first response. The Arabs did it. And, again, not Hamas, not Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad or any of the scary sounding radical groups.

None of whom is anywhere near as radical as some of Bibi’s own cabinet ministers. But in any case, those radical Islamic groups, he’s not blaming them. He’s blaming his own people, the people he’s supposed to be representing. And it wasn’t just him.

Yair Netanyahu Weighs In

As the day went on, his view of this was bolstered by his son, Yair Netanyahu. You may have read about it. In fact, if you go to nightclubs in Miami during the Gaza conflict, you may have run into him because he was there in Miami for much of that conflict when basically every secular man in the nation of Israel was drafted to fight that, and some died. Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, spent the bulk of that time in Miami, again, at nightclubs, etcetera, etcetera. In any case, he’s back in Israel weighing in on today’s election.

And here’s what he said, and we’re quoting. “The truth must be told,” which is always a tell, the truth is not going to be told. “The election results prove that the majority of Muslim Arabs in Israel identify as Palestinians, justify terrorism against us, want to drive all Jews out of here, aspire to destroy the Jewish state, and establish an Arab Islamic Palestinian state on its ruins. This is an existential problem no less than the Iranian nuclear threat. Israeli law, section seven a of the basic law, the Knesset, is very clear and prohibits parties that support terrorism and negate Israel as a Jewish state from running for the Knesset.”

“The reason they’re in the Knesset is that the high court of justices emptied the law of substance and enabled their candidacy in violation of the law.” In other words, if you disagree with the ruling coalition, which as of tonight is still the Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud coalition, you can’t participate in elections. This is the Israeli version of democracy. You’re allowed to run against us as long as we substantively agree with you, as long as we’re basically on the same page and arguing about the margins. But if you seek actual representation in our system, if you feel you are being marginalized, if your children, for example, go to separate and much less well funded schools, if you’re living under state sponsored segregation, which, of course, Arab Israeli citizens are and have been since the foundation of the state of Israel.

Segregation and Arab Citizens of Israel

Their kids go to separate schools. Jim Crow alert. You may not have heard this from the ADL, which is, of course, ever vigilant that there might be a resurgence in segregation in The United States, but they don’t mention that state sponsored segregation is the rule in Israel, but it is. You can look it up if you like. How many Muslim Arab kids go to publicly funded Jewish majority schools in Israel?

Basically, zero. They go to their own schools. So let’s say you don’t like that system. Let’s say you believe it’s separate and unequal, and let’s say you have relatives in the occupied territories who may have lived there for, I don’t know, a couple thousand years, and your relatives have been slaughtered in the genocide that your government has been committing for the three years, and you’re dissatisfied with that. And so you’re voting as you thought was your right in a democracy, the only democracy in The Middle East against government policy.

You are now a terrorist. And according to the Netanyahu family, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote. So what you’re watching actually is not simply a losing candidate yelping about losing, though you’re definitely watching that, and we can debate whether he really will lose in the end. Don’t bet against Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s certainly not a genius or a wise leader, but he is crafty and tougher than most people in politics.

And he may wind up six months from now remaining the prime minister of Israel. We’ll see. So you’re certainly watching that. You’re watching a guy fighting off his back using all available rhetorical weapons, but you’re also watching the beginning of a consensus change in Israel. You are beginning… Watching a process by which the Israeli political system just says the unspoken out loud, no. Arabs cannot participate in our system. And so its defenders would no longer be able to falsely claim that Israel is a democracy. Of course, it has not been a democracy since 1967 because at least half the population of the territories controlled by the government of Israel are Arab, and they can’t vote. So you can’t have a democracy if almost half of your population can’t vote.

That’s not a democracy. That’s actually like slavery, which is what it is. In fact, it’s worse than chattel slavery in The United States because chattel slavery in The United States never had intentional genocide, horrible as it was, and Israel does. But in any case, they’ll no longer be able to say, “the only democracy in The Middle East” because it demonstrably won’t be. But given the way public opinion in Israel seems to be changing, evolving, perhaps devolving in real time, it’s possible they just don’t care what the West thinks of them.

Even what voters in The United States think of them. Perhaps even what politicians in The United States think of them. Now everything that we’ve read is real, and it’s been out for, well, in the case of the Levin video, more than twenty four hours, and you haven’t seen any reaction at all from the pro Israel chorus in American politics, which would include the leaders of both parties. And, of course, a couple of them are particularly active, and you know their names. One represents Texas and the United States Senate, and another is The US ambassador to Israel, and there are a whole bunch of them.

And, of course, our richest class is filled with them. Bill Ackman and his friends, all serious long term supporters, not simply of the state of Israel or the idea of Israel, but of the Netanyahu government of Likud. And as Likud becomes explicitly, not simply anti terror or anti Hamas, but anti Arab, including the Arabs who are citizens of their own country, hate them because they are Arabs. These people, not one of them, has said a word about it. Not one.

Ben Shapiro on Banning Arab Parties

Well, let’s actually revise that. One has. And we’re just grateful for the candor on display in this clip. And, again, every week, we pledge no more Ben Shapiro clips. You don’t want to elevate the guy above his station.

You don’t want the kind of dark temptation to mock his eyebrows. All the kind of ancillary potential problems with playing a Ben Shapiro clip, but this is just too perfect, and so we’re going to break our own rule and do it. So here’s Ben Shapiro today with a whole cast of people who agree with him all sort of nodding. Oh, yeah. Oh, Ben Shapiro.

Good point. Watch their faces as he just says, you know what? We’re just going to have to strip voting rights from Arabs in Israel. Watch this.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

BEN SHAPIRO: The extreme Arab party got an enormous number of seats in this election, and the leadership of that party is openly anti Israel, wishes to destroy the state of Israel, openly talks about solidarity with Hamas. It’s kind of an astonishing thing they’re allowed to sit in the Knesset in the first place. The Supreme Court of Israel… There’s been a lot talk about judicial reform. It seems to me that if the Supreme Court of Israel worth its salt, if you’re going to ban the Kahanists, which is totally fine and appropriate, if you’re going to ban the Kahanists, then banning the Arab party that calls for this… Not all Arab parties, but the party that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, that seems some pretty baseline stuff.

The fact they haven’t is pretty astonishing.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

TUCKER CARLSON: So he just says it. He just says it. When he says the most radical Arab party, he’s talking about the Arab party that democratically in the Israeli system abiding by the rules of the Israeli system. No one has actually provided specifics to refute that.

They went along with the system the Israelis set up for them to participate, and they got their voter turnout to about 80%, which is apparently higher than the median turnout in Israel. In other words, they did what you’re supposed to do in a democracy. And because of that, here you have Ben Shapiro who poses as an American, a defender of the American system, and a defender of Israel because Israel has a version of the American system, participatory democracy, an enlightened liberal view of the world, both heirs of Western civilization. You have that guy pulling off the mask and just say, well, no. No.

Arabs can’t vote. No. They’re terrorists. Really? Have they committed acts of terror?

Name them. Within Israel and the occupied territories right now, what percentage of the verified, let’s just say on tape, acts of terror in the past three years have been committed by Arabs? Well, some. Sure. The majority?

Oh, no. 30%? Don’t think so. Lower. Much, much lower.

Settler Violence in the West Bank

And this is not a defense of Hamas, which is certainly committed acts of terror for sure. It’s merely an accurate and honest observation about where we are right now in 2026 and have been for the last three years. The acts of terror within Israel proper and particularly within the territories it controls. It administers. It writes the rules.

The acts of terror within that area, Palestine, are overwhelmingly committed by Israelis, by IDF soldiers, by Shin Bet operatives, and by settlers. Settlers would be mostly young people, the so called hilltop youth, disproportionately American, a lot of them from Long Island, who have moved at the encouragement of the Israeli government and the huge pools of money set aside, given largely by American donors and administered within Israel who have moved to the West Bank, the area that for incomprehensible reasons Mike Huckabee refers to with dead seriousness, Judea and Samaria. Really? How many Samaritans are left there? Mike Huckabee, can you tell us what a Samaritan is?

No. Whatever. But to that region, an area that was formerly part of Jordan that was taken by Israel in the Six Day War in 1967 and has never been claimed as Israel. It’s just an area that they control. We call it the occupied territories because it’s occupied by the Israeli military.

And so it’s a kind of gray zone where Israel runs it. They control the utilities. They control everything about it. They close the airport. You can’t get in or out without permission from the Israeli authorities.

So it is in effect Israel, but no one who lives there can vote. If they’re Arab, the Jews who can live there can vote. And amazingly, a lot of those Jews who can vote are just recently arrived from, well, The United States. And some of them are probably peaceful religious people. Some of them are dangerous lunatics, as dangerous as anybody in ISIS, as committed to violence, as besotted by some sort of millennialist theology as anybody in the Islamic state, truly radical religious extremists.

And so if you know anything about this, if you followed it at all, you know that not only is everything I just said true, it’s accelerating. It is getting more intense and more crazy. In fact, so intense and so crazy that there have been moments in the last year or two that even the Netanyahu government has felt compelled because there’s a lot of video evidence this is really happening, that the sort of settler Taliban is running around killing people, old people, kids in the occupied territories. There’s so much evidence of it that the… At times, Netanyahu government has had to sort of semi distance itself from what’s going on.

And that would include the most valuable asset in the Israeli government, which would be someone whose salary you pay directly, not indirectly like the rest of them. That would be The US ambassador to Israel, as he calls it, Mike Huckabee from Arkansas. And even Mike Huckabee has had this… Well, guys, that’s a little over the top. But, of course, that’s all cover.

An American Citizen Attacked: Video Never Shown Before

They don’t mean it. And it’s more over the top than you may realize. And we’re about to show you a video that has not been shown anywhere before. This is something that happened last week in a West Bank town whose name we’re not going to tell you, and it happened to a family we’re not going to identify. Now original plan was to have one family member who shot this video on the show tonight to explain what was happening.

But we got a call from him today saying that he was pulling out because he believes if he were publicly identified, his family who remain in this town would be killed. So as we play this, we want you to keep in mind a couple of things. One, the elderly man who you’re about to watch being beaten by masked settlers with sticks dressed very much like ISIS in black masks, that man who was badly injured by this attack, and you’ll see why in just a minute, is an American citizen as are the majority of people who live in this town in the West Bank. They are mostly Muslim, Arabs, not all. But they’re American citizens, and this man is an American citizen.

He’s an American. And the people beating him may or may not have been Americans. Perhaps they’re dual citizens. We don’t know. But as they beat him, they were acting in their capacity as Israeli citizens with the full impunity from punishment that that implies in the occupied territories.

Now, again, this has never been shown, and we had hoped to have it fleshed out a little bit by a person who shot it, but in the end, he was too afraid that his family would be killed if he were identified. So with that, here’s the video.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

TUCKER CARLSON: There was no sound, but you can watch carefully what is happening. There they are. Three men beating an elderly man on the ground.

We blurred that out because the family is so concerned he’ll be identified, and he runs away. And as he does, more masked settlers arrive, and they throw rocks at the house and then they decide to pour gasoline on the family car and ignite it. At this point, there seem to be six of them of these Israeli Taliban. Oh, and there they go. There’s seven of them, and they light his car on fire and run away.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

TUCKER CARLSON: Now you can tell from the backyard there that this is not a slum. Not that it matters, of course. These are human beings. But just in point of fact, they’re not torching a car and beating a homeowner in some shanty town that was erected illegally on Israeli land. No.

They’re torching the car and beating the patriarch of a family who has been there since the beginning of time and has been successful and who are law abiding, productive members of society. Again, it doesn’t matter morally whether they’re poor or rich. But just to be totally clear here, they’re beating up an American homeowner in what looks like a suburban backyard in The United States except it happens to be in the occupied territories in the West Bank, and they beat this man almost to death. And what happened next? Keep in mind, he’s an American.

What do you think the first thing he did was? Well, he called the American embassy. He called Mike Huckabee’s office, and maybe he spoke to Mark Levin’s stepson who runs that office. Still, even after he was caught trying to hide attacks on Americans from the White House, even as he was caught soliciting money from people in Israel for his wedding. He still has the job for some reason.

Because when criticized in a lengthy and exhaustive New York Times piece, his stepfather just screamed antisemitism until he kept his job. Antisemitism. Okay. Alright now. Well, it’s actually not antisemitic to defend the life of an American when he’s beaten by religious extremists in a foreign country.

But so distorted has this administration become, so distorted has every administration been for the last sixty years that there is no… It’s no longer obvious to them that their first obligation is to Americans and to The United States. And that’s why Mike Huckabee was allowed to host secretly until he was caught the most damaging spy in our lifetimes. Jonathan Pollard, who stole secrets from the US military, gave them to the Israeli government, which passed them to the Soviet Union. That’s all true.

A Political Class Pretending Not to See

And that guy meets secretly with the US ambassador who’s one of his great champions, and no one does anything about it. Just pretend it didn’t happen. Just as our entire political class is pretending that Israel has not gone insane, that its leaders aren’t calling for stripping citizens of their voting rights because they’re Arab. Again, these are people who were there long before Theodor Herzl thought up this whole program. And our political class has pledged allegiance to this country, which you could argue wasn’t always insane.

It wasn’t always a bloodthirsty ethnostate committing genocide against children, murdering over 100,000 people, openly calling for sending people to camps because they’re Arab. That’s all happening right now, and it’s not an exaggeration. And so because for the last thirty years, only people who don’t shave their armpits talked about this at rallies in Washington, it was very easy to dismiss them as the radical America hating French. See, they hate America, and they hate Israel. But the truth is there weren’t mass outcries about this because people didn’t bother themselves to learn about it.

But the more you know about what is happening not two years ago, but right now. The more you learn about it, it becomes completely unsustainable. There’s no way any decent person could support any of that. It’s so over the top. It is so openly genocidal and murderous, and it’s all being done with your money in your name. A country that’s richer than ours is taking our money to murder people who didn’t do anything wrong, and our entire political class is pretending it’s not happening and then refusing to help Americans who are beaten by men in masks.

Right? So, obviously, all of this is going to change. Because unlike, say, five years ago when only people on the fringes who spent Sunday with signs jumping up and down in front of public buildings, they’re the only people who cared. Now a good chunk of the entire American population knows exactly what’s going on, and they’re not going to put up with it. And you will never again, in our lifetimes, have an American president who can stand on a debate stage and say as Nikki Haley famously did, “we get a lot more from Israel than they get from us” or any assorted absurd nonsensical bumper sticker.

No one will ever vote for that again. But it’s just amazing that it’s gone on for so long. It’s amazing.

Jeffrey Sachs Joins the Show

So we thought it’d just be a perfect time considering the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu may finally be coming to an end after thirty incredibly ugly and bloody years or not, it’d be worth checking in with one of the true experts on the subject, someone who has been traveling in and out of Israel for more than fifty years with family there, who began with a very sympathetic understanding of Israel like most Americans, by the way. In the wake of the Six Day War, Israel was probably the most popular country in The United States. Americans didn’t always dislike Israel. They learned to dislike Israel the hard way.

In any case, Jeffrey Sachs is, it is fair to say, an even handed and deeply knowledgeable observer of what is happening in Israel. And so just a moment ago, we talked to him about what this election means. Here’s the conversation.

Jeffrey Sachs, thank you so much for doing this.

JEFFREY SACHS: Of course. Anytime, Tucker. Thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: So we’re right in the middle of trying to figure out what the Israeli election results mean. They’re not certified, of course, yet. Where do you think Israel stands as of right now?

JEFFREY SACHS: Well, what happened is that the Israeli Jewish vote divided roughly equally. Maybe Netanyahu’s group got a few more seats, a little bit higher percentage. But Netanyahu lost his governing majority. And the big news, really, although it’s being pushed away in some way, is that the Arab vote turned out massively and won about 16 or 17% of the seats in the Parliament, in the Knesset, and they could be the determining factor actually if common sense prevails to get Netanyahu out, and to at least get a different group in. Netanyahu is one of the great disasters of modern history for Israel and for the whole world and for The United States.

And getting him out would be a profoundly beneficial thing for all concerned. So I think that the remarkable fact actually is that the Arabs who constitute about 20% of Israel’s population had a turnout that is something like 80% astounding, up from an estimated 55% in the 2022 parliamentary election. They got a lot of seats. They could determine the new government if extreme anti Arab racism doesn’t predominate in Israel, which it certainly could. But if some people are reasonable, decent, not vulgarly racist in the Netanyahu opposition, then there will be a new government with Netanyahu gone, and the possibility of something better, and something much better, Tucker, of course, for The United States.

Because Netanyahu seems to work his spell on Donald Trump who has betrayed our country and betrayed his base and betrayed his promises about putting America first, because he put Israel first during these first two years of this administration, and it’s been dreadful. And maybe with Netanyahu gone, maybe America could actually regain a little bit of our own sovereignty. This would be my hope.

How Netanyahu Could Lose Power

TUCKER CARLSON: So a couple things. Just to be clear on what you’re saying, you’re saying that Netanyahu could lose power if his opponents were willing to form a coalition with the Arab parties, but it’s possible that they may be under so much internal pressure that they don’t form a coalition with the Arab parties and Netanyahu stays.

Is that what you’re saying?

JEFFREY SACHS: Yeah. So there are two ways that things could happen. The way you mentioned is one of the two, not the most likely. But the other way in a parliamentary system is that the opposition group, led by a General Eisenkot, could govern as a minority share of the parliament, but what’s called with the support of the Arabs.

In other words, when the budget comes up, the Arab bloc votes with the government to adopt the budget and to adopt crucial legislation, but it’s not part of the government, so it’s not a coalition. Now, okay, if this were a normal society, which Israel is not, Israel is a deranged society, I’m very sad to say, but if this were a normal society, the Arab parties and this opposition group would unite and there’d be a clear majority, a quite decisive majority. And Netanyahu would go off to jail or to wherever he would go, and it would be simple. But the leaders of the Jewish side of the anti Netanyahu bloc vowed not to cooperate with the Arabs. This is the perversity of Israel.

This is an extraordinary racism. This is an extraordinary lack of decency and practical politics. The Arabs constitute 20% of the Israeli population, and I’m talking about of Israel proper. If we look at all of the land, that means of Israel proper, and of East Jerusalem and of the West Bank and of Gaza, then it’s fifty-fifty.

And that’s how it really should be. In fact, it should be fifty-fifty. But even within the more limited boundaries of those who are called Israeli citizens, because the others don’t have any rights, but if those who are called Israeli citizens, that’s 20% of the population. And they’re supposed to have their rights, and they just voted. They just turned out in mass numbers.

Racism and the Arab Vote

And if these opposition figures would say, yeah. Okay. Now we form another coalition. There’d be the normal bargaining about what the coalition would be. The Arab parties would be junior members of that coalition, to be sure, just in the sheer vote count, in the sheer count of seats.

But it would be normal that they would be part of the government. Of course, it’s not that way because Israel is a deranged society. It is vulgarly anti Arab, it is racist, anti Arab, and it is violently anti Arab, of course. So while Netanyahu and his side, including these monsters, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, are outright murderous. The other side I don’t think is outright murderous.

I hope not, and I don’t think they are. But before the election to prove their true Zionism, they declared they would never take support or join in a coalition with the Arab parties. But here come the Arab parties, and they have won 20 seats or so in the Knesset out of the 120 seats. They are the balance of power. Normal politicians would say one of these two options, which is okay, we could join the government and get some ministries, probably junior ministries, not the essential ministries, I’m sure not defense, not finance and so forth, but you could have some ministries and it would be a normal country.

But Israel, not being a normal country, could also have these politicians say there are good reasons to get Netanyahu out. He is a betrayer of Israel’s security. This is clear. He is actually under warrant for his arrest by the International Criminal Court. His leadership has slaughtered probably around 100,000 people in Gaza.

Every sign suggests that he knew that the attack was coming and either decided to let it happen for some reason for his politics or is so thoroughly delusional and incompetent that he didn’t put the country on alert. But whatever it is, the man failed. So you might think that the opposition, which has vowed not to go into government with him, might say, okay, we’ll govern with the support of the Arab parties. In other words, they won’t join the government, but we will negotiate so that they can have more decent lives and not be subject to brutality and attack, and they will vote for our budget or make sure that we can effectively govern, in which case Netanyahu would be out immediately. Whether they do that, it’s really a test.

It’s a test of the most basic politics. What takes precedence in Israel? Anti Arab racism or the chance for Israel to stabilize itself after the monstrosities that have occurred in recent years and the disasters that have occurred in Israel in recent years. That’s the drama that we’re facing. One other way that Netanyahu can go is a rather different way, which is that the so called Zionist parties, which is the Netanyahu side and the opposition side, form a coalition with the proviso that Netanyahu leave.

And that could happen, for example, if Netanyahu got his pardon, because the man’s a crook on top of everything else. So he could be pardoned by the president. He could retire from office, and then a number of parties could form a Jewish majority and just ignore the fact that 20% of the population is Arab and get on with the Zionist side. So that’s another possibility. In other words, there are many ways that Netanyahu could go.

He lost his majority. The opposition to Netanyahu is a clear majority, although part of it is the Arab parties. So there are a number of ways that clear expression that of the 10 million people in Israel, 8 million Jews, and 2 million Arabs, the significant majority want this man and his murderous gang to leave. And they should be able to figure this out, frankly.

“The Arabs Are Going to Take Over”

TUCKER CARLSON: I heard something yesterday I never heard before, and it came from Mark Levin, the Fox News host and Netanyahu promoter. And he was urging Likud supporters in Israel to vote in a video. And in it, he said, if you don’t vote, the Arabs are going to take over, and they’ll destroy the country. And I thought, for years…

And I know that that kind of talk is common in Israel. It has not been common in The United States among supporters of Israel who instead tell you that Israel is worth supporting because it’s, quote, “the only democracy in the Middle East,” notwithstanding the fact that millions of Arabs in the territories can’t vote. But Israel proper is a democracy.

JEFFREY SACHS: Not even can’t vote, can’t even live.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, of course, they’re being murdered.

JEFFREY SACHS: Yes. Of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: But… So they say, no. Well, that’s complicated, more occupying, and whatever.

But in Israel itself, Israel proper, as you said, we have this big Arab minority, and they’re citizens, and their citizenship is what matters. It’s a western system where your religion is secondary to your citizenship, and it’s therefore a democracy.

JEFFREY SACHS: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: They went to the polls. They voted. But here you have… They’re not saying that anymore. It’s like, no. They can’t have power because they’re Arabs.

JEFFREY SACHS: Well, that’s not… No.

It’s even worse than that, Tucker, because today, with this big turnout and this success of the Arab parties, Netanyahu is saying that this is a fraud, that the Arabs have stolen the election. So it’s actually just mind boggling. This man, of course, is a thug and a liar and will say anything at any time. But the line today is not just, oh my god. What are we going to do when the other side might take support from the Arabs?

But no. This is a fraud. They’ve stolen this country. So this is apparently what this Fox newscaster who… Whatever newscaster is a little bit too glorious for him.

But whatever he said, yes, that has become the new line because the appeal is to rank racism, period. That’s the appeal. And it works to an extent, but it does not work to create a governing majority. That’s the reality right now.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, works in the short term, but over time, it becomes something you want to distance yourself from because it’s ugly and shameful. And you could say that of a lot of things going on right now, including the genocide in Gaza. So it… You do sort of wonder

American Revulsion at the Gaza War

JEFFREY SACHS: And I would say that one thing we should be very proud of in The United States is that as Israel committed this genocide, the American people were in revulsion about this.

And now a majority of Americans, actually a significant majority of young people, and I’m very proud of the young people being an older guy, they’re significantly on the side of the Palestinians who are being slaughtered in this, and they see Israel for what it is doing right now, is being a murderous and racist state. I’m not saying every person in Israel is

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course.

JEFFREY SACHS: Obviously not. But what I’m saying is that the state has behaved that way, and the politicians that are running for office right now should behave themselves not in this racist manner. And they shouldn’t say we will never cooperate with the Arab voters and the Arab parties that have won apparently 19 or 20 seats in the Knesset.

This is the route actually to their power and to the reform of what has gone terribly wrong in Israel. So they could actually show the door to Netanyahu if they swallow the racism and get on with normal politics, not racist politics.

TUCKER CARLSON: We… So do you think that’s possible? I mean, I think we both agree it’s good if Netanyahu is bounced because he’s done indisputably terrible things, and that should never be rewarded.

But if he is

JEFFREY SACHS: And he’s done terrible things to our country, Tucker.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, well, that’s what I’m mad about. Right? I watched it.

JEFFREY SACHS: Yeah.

What Happens If Netanyahu Goes?

TUCKER CARLSON: No. Absolutely. I agree. But if he leaves, does it get better? Does the country get better?

Does America’s relationship with Israel change? What do you imagine happens if he loses?

JEFFREY SACHS: Well, I think his being gone will be at least a break in the clouds, or a break in this horrible storm. This man has been a disaster for thirty years. We’re in the thirtieth anniversary since he first came to power as prime minister.

He came to power on a platform with his American Zionist allies that Israel and The United States together would launch a lot of wars so that Netanyahu could have his greater Israel agenda, meaning crush the Palestinians. This is not exactly America’s interest. This is not exactly America’s cause. We should never have signed up to such a horrendous thing, but of course, our presidents did, and Trump said he wasn’t going to, and he’s doubled down on everything, even taking us to a disastrous war in Iran because Bibi told him to do so. So this is a chance actually to at least put a break to what has been thirty years of American perpetual wars costing us trillions of dollars and being the aiding and abetting genocide.

So, yes, I want him to go. It would make a difference. But would it make a decisive difference in the rhetoric and the politics coming out of Israel? Obviously not a decisive difference. A lot of this opposition is hardline, and absolutely against a Palestinian state, but not all of them are like that.

And anyway, maybe we’re going in a completely different direction to a, I think, even more likely, and Israel’s almost compelling it, not to two states, but to one democratic state where Arabs and Jews vote together, and you form governments. And it’s just a different way, and maybe that’s even a better way because Israel says we’ll never have two states. Okay. So you have one state where Arabs have rights too, and they’re allowed to stay alive, and they’re allowed to vote. And we have one state.

A lot of countries are like that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

JEFFREY SACHS: Binational states. Belgium’s like that, just to take one example. So maybe we’re heading in that direction, but we need to head in a completely different direction.

And one of the tragedies, of course, is what Netanyahu has done to The United States. But one of the shocking tragedies is how Donald Trump jumped full in on all of this and has brought disaster to our country, and his base knows it too.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

JEFFREY SACHS: And Trump could not resist in the last few days endorsing Netanyahu after everything, just proving, come on, president of The United States, why don’t you just stay out of it? Because we don’t actually want to take on every delusion and every war of Netanyahu.

Why don’t we have America first, actually, and not have you, Mr. President, so obsessed with Israel’s election that you got to get your buddy in your Iran war and in the Gaza genocide to stay in power. What is that all about? So, yes, if Netanyahu goes, it’s also a little bit of space and freedom for The United States, and the public wants this. The public… The MAGA public wants it for sure, as you know.

TUCKER CARLSON: Absolutely.

JEFFREY SACHS: The Democrats want this. It’s both sides of the political spectrum and especially the young people in America, irrespective of parties. They don’t want this anymore, that we just continue these disastrous wars for this delusion of Israel crushing the Palestinian people. This is not America’s gig.

This is not our thing.

The 2028 Presidential Race and Israel

TUCKER CARLSON: So, I mean, let’s say Netanyahu remains prime minister or even if he doesn’t, can you imagine two years from now, we’ll be at the presidential election, any candidate getting up on stage and saying, we stand with Israel. I stand with Israel. It’s our closest ally. Any candidate who would say that getting elected from either party. There’s no chance.

JEFFREY SACHS: No way. No way from either party. This is absolutely… A candidate has to explain. I’m not going to do what Trump did.

I’m not going to tell you that and then fake it, and pull the rug out from under you and jump into another Middle East war. I’m not going to do it. The one that is convincing on that is going to win the presidency.

TUCKER CARLSON: I agree with you completely. I mean, but if… What a change… If… Sometimes it’s just worth pausing and acknowledging how quickly and totally consensuses have changed. So, I mean, in the last election, it was unspoken, sometimes spoken, but just assumed that every serious candidate for the presidency of The United States would basically uncritically support Israel.

And that’s been that way for a long time.

JEFFREY SACHS: A lot of money, of course

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

JEFFREY SACHS: Was involved in campaign contributions, and they felt the American people aren’t watching, so we can basically do this. We need our campaign finance. We need our friends. We need our business deals.

There’s a lot of corruption in all of this. And so they thought no one was watching, but… And this is why they were so desperate about TikTok and all the rest because people were watching. And the American people absolutely did not want to be party to mass slaughter

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

JEFFREY SACHS: Because we’re decent people.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

Thirty Years of Wars: Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran

JEFFREY SACHS: And that is the basic point. They saw what this is all about. Now the truth is this has been going on for thirty years. And for those of us who kind of obsess about all of these things and that we follow it hour to hour, day to day, this is what the Iraq war was all about

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

JEFFREY SACHS: In 2003. It was a war not on mistaken premises about weapons of mass destruction, but on phony premises because Netanyahu came to The United States in the fall of 2002 and spoke to Congress and told him this is going to be the greatest war ever. Oh, and it’s going to spread sunshine and light all over the Middle East, and it’s going to lead to the overthrow of the Iranian regime. And every absolute inanity, insanity, and lie, he told. Okay.

That’s 2003. That was a few trillion dollars down the drain. And then came 2011, and there we were for Mr. Netanyahu again. NATO under Obama, bombing Libya because we had to overthrow that government, and we succeeded in creating a civil war and unrest that spread across Africa and that has been going on for fifteen years now. Nothing came out of it except chaos.

And Obama and Hillary, well, they decided, and Netanyahu’s all there, yeah, we got to overthrow the Syrian government. And presidential finding, Operation Timber Sycamore, that the CIA is now tasked with arming, training, financing, the insurgency to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, another Bibi brainchild. And that one took fifteen years, killed hundreds of thousands of people, cost America a fortune, created disasters that continue to this day.

TUCKER CARLSON: Flooded Europe with refugees.

JEFFREY SACHS: Yeah. Of course. And created this mass backlash, and Europe is… I’m in Europe right now, so sad and pathetic that they have been so terrified of The United States that they can’t speak an honest truth.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. So the refugees came in. They couldn’t say, hey. Maybe you should stop that war in Syria because you’re creating a lot of problems.

JEFFREY SACHS: Exactly. This created a mess all over the world. And then, of course, we now have the Iran war, and the American people are furious about it.

And they’re right to be furious about it. This has to be the dumbest, most useless, senseless war imaginable. And twice Trump did the same thing last year and this year in the midst of negotiations that were actually leading to a settlement, which was terrifying our dear friend, Bibi. They went to war to prevent a negotiated settlement and went to war to kill the people negotiating. And I don’t know if Americans fully appreciate this, but on February 28th of this year, when Trump jumped into this swamp or let’s say he dragged us into this mess, they killed dozens of Iranian leaders, including the supreme leader.

Why were they all together? Because they were at the residence of the supreme leader discussing the next round of diplomacy with The United States that was to start the following week. And the day before, the Omani mediator had come out to explain how much progress was being made, and now the negotiators would meet the following week in Vienna. Well, Netanyahu for thirty years has said, don’t negotiate at all. Crush them.

Overthrow them. Go to war with them. And each war has been a cascade of more disasters than the last. It has made our government indebted up to here. We’re now, as everybody knows, with sky high interest rates that will continue to soar, budget out of control, and Trump jumped into this exactly the opposite of what he promised his own base and what he promised the American people.

So should Netanyahu go absolutely, please, today, tomorrow? You guys in Israel, figure it out. You won the election. Put aside your racism and actually figure out a way to form a government.

The Rise of Religious Extremism in Israel

TUCKER CARLSON: So I always thought of Israel having visited it a lot and enjoy myself every time. I was thought of it as kind of a European country with mostly European attitudes or European inflected attitudes with kind of eastern charm. But a lot of recognizably sort of liberal people there. All of a sudden… And not unless you were in the orthodox neighborhoods, not a religious country at all. That…

At least that was my experience of Tel Aviv, for example. Now I see clips constantly of Israeli leaders not wearing black hats, sounding like messianic religious extremists. Am I imagining this? Has the… The general attitude in Israel toward religious extremism changed?

JEFFREY SACHS: It’s, as you know, a very complicated story and a complicated history. But Zionism in its original form was a secular movement. It was mainly Russian secular figures, not religious people or Theodor Herzl.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

JEFFREY SACHS: He knew nothing about it. He knew nothing about rabbinic Judaism. And by the way, the rabbis of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century and many rabbis until this day are against the whole idea of Zionism.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

JEFFREY SACHS: They said, no. Judaism is a religion of ethics with regard to God and not with regard to idolatry of the land.

And there are, of course, we’ve discussed it also, rabbinic injunctions going back 1,500, 1,800 years. It’s actually called the Three Oaths in the Talmud, which say, “Do not create Zionism again until the Messiah comes first for the Jewish people.” And so this was not a religious movement, and in fact religious Judaism, or what could be called rabbinic Judaism was basically anti Zionist for decades, in the early decades of the Zionist movement after the… Before and after the Balfour Declaration. When I started going to Israel, my first visit was in 1972, so fifty four years ago.

There were religious neighborhoods, of course, and religious communities. But Israel was a kind of a mostly secular ideology, and there were divisions about what to do. I was there five years after the Six Day War, so called, the 1967 war where Israel had captured the territories of Palestinian areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Gaza. And there were debates about what to do, but a large part of the politics said, well, yeah, we have to give these lands back, and maybe there’ll be a Palestinian state, or maybe there’ll be some other kind of arrangement, but this is a temporary occupation. Of course, Netanyahu’s party, the Likud party, which has its founding charter in 1977, said in the founding charter, “all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea will remain Israeli sovereignty.”

So the whole point of Netanyahu’s party was to rule out a state of Palestine and, of course, to deny equal rights to the Palestinians that were under Israel’s occupation. So they created this racist state, and then things turned uglier and uglier over time, because what emerged was not rabbinic Judaism, but a kind of muscular fascistic Judaism. This is the kind of Judaism of this Ben-Gvir, and his party is called Jewish Power. It’s astounding. And he celebrated, I think it was a birthday with a noose on the cake because he wants to kill Arabs, and he wants to torment them and torture them and expel them, basically.

He’s a monster. And he represents what emerged in the seventies and the eighties and nineties, a violent, radical, profoundly racist, increasingly religious approach. Now this sounds strange to us. This is not what religion is about at all for me and for you. It’s the opposite of Christ’s teachings, that’s for sure.

The Book of Joshua and “National Judaism”

And it’s the opposite of Jewish ethical teachings. But it harks back to a very complicated book in the Bible called the Book of Joshua, which is a tale of repeated genocides by the Israelites conquering the so called Promised Land. It’s actually in historical terms a political tract written in the seventh century BC, that was a kind of a political tract in the style of the Mesopotamian glory writing of those centuries where the king said, I killed all my opponents. I am the great conqueror. And this is exactly in that style as many scholars have shown, probably King Josiah in the seventh century BC, and it boasts of genocides.

And this text has now been taken on in a kind of religious zealotry and fervor that you see the Bible tells us you can commit genocide. And that’s so perverse. Beyond belief, and so completely the opposite of what two thousand years of rabbinic Judaism is all about. But it’s a new kind of, they call it national Judaism. It’s national in the most vulgar sense, which is that the Jews are supreme, and the Arabs need to be thrown out or killed or ruled over as noncitizens.

And these are all the options that are being played out right now. So, Tucker, this is something new. This was not Israel thirty or forty or fifty years ago. It is something new. And, of course, one of the tricks of Netanyahu’s predecessor, Menachem Begin, and then really the calling card of Netanyahu himself, was to enlist the Christian evangelicals, not on the basis of, certainly not Jesus’ teachings, let me put it that way, not on the basis of the Gospels, not on the Sermon on the Mount, not on the great Prince of Peace, and the greatest peacemaker in history, you could say, who taught about peace.

But to enlist a kind of basic, the Jews must be there because that’s what the Bible says, and then we can have the final days or whatever. And this created a lot of also the political base for Netanyahu’s extremism in The United States. So all of this is to say religion got hijacked. The Jewish religion got hijacked, and Christianity got hijacked, actually, in the cause of murder, which is extraordinary. It’s exactly the opposite of Christianity, and I would say it’s exactly the opposite of Judaism.

But it got hijacked in a fervor of extreme racist nationalism, and it grew in the seventies, eighties, nineties. I watched it grow because it was not there in 1972, and it was only showing its face in the eighties when the illegal settlements in the occupied territories started to grow in number. And then a number of rabbis and one extremist from The United States, Meir Kahane, who was the progenitor of Ben-Gvir’s extremism, came to the forefront. And Netanyahu, because he’s a… By the way, everyone I know of senior Israelis say the same thing, that he’s simply the most unprincipled, absolute, immoral, self interested person imaginable, completely manipulative, desperate for power, will do anything, he opened the door to even more extremism than himself.

And one of the subtexts of the last few days is supposedly that even President Trump is telling Netanyahu, well, you got to get rid of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. And supposedly that’s a part of the negotiations going on right now because these people are so extreme, so vulgar, and in the name of religion, that it is beyond what we could ever have imagined. And it is, just let me add, the ultimate lie of saying that being against what Israel is doing is antisemitic, it’s the ultimate complete lie and untruth. Because to be against the murderous behavior of the Israeli state is the most important defense of Judaism you can have. It’s not against Judaism.

It is the defense of Judaism as a religion of godliness and ethics, not against it. And to stand by with mass murder, that is a destruction, a manipulation, a hijacking of a religion.

TUCKER CARLSON: Amen.

JEFFREY SACHS: And every religious person in our country should understand that. I mean, every preacher, every minister, every priest should understand mass murder is against religion, period.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. The opposite of it. I love that. So one last question, Jeff. You mentioned Meir Kahane, and it’s who’s an American, I think, from New York

JEFFREY SACHS: Mhmm.

What Next for Israel?

TUCKER CARLSON: Murdered in the end in New York. But it… It’s just another reminder that everything that is happening in Israel has been abetted, paid for, populated by supporters of Israel in The United States. A lot of settlers are from The United States. Kahane was from The United States.

The money comes from The United States. America as a nation, as a political system is clearly going to withdraw… Is going to change its relationship, distance itself from Israel. What next for Israel? I mean, that has profound consequences for Israel.

So what does Israel do as that happens?

JEFFREY SACHS: The American people are demanding that we stop supporting this criminality. This is clear. And our politicians will respond to that. They’re winning elections on that basis.

And they will continue to win elections on that basis. And in 2028, just like you said, the candidate that says the American people are decent people and we are not going to abet this kind of regime that is violent, that is in perpetual war, that is mass murdering Palestinian people, will be the one that prevails. So America will absolutely stop its support. By the way, it needs to happen before they insert this absolutely extraordinary clause in the defense legislation, which would basically turn the Pentagon over to Israel. It’s still pending.

This attempt to merge Israeli security and US security, which would be absolutely the most shocking irresponsibility of American politicians, the most shameful behavior imaginable of American politicians, to say that at this moment, we give a special relationship to Israel inside our security apparatus at the core. And that’s what a lot of these congressmen and senators are actually still trying to do in the waning moments of this AIPAC funded congress. This is the end of that story, but they’re still trying to put some absolute horrible things in place before they depart at the start of the next congress. So what will happen to Israel? Israel will have some reckoning to do.

Israel will not be able to live in peace and possibly not be able to survive if it is attempting to crush half the population of this shared territory. And it is half the population. And I ran some demographics in the last few days to try to understand different scenarios, but basically, the Arabs and the Jews are going to be roughly fifty-fifty for the next twenty or thirty years in this shared territory. So the thing that has been on offer for decades is that you make two states. One that is Arab, one that is Jewish, and they live side by side.

Two States, One State, or Binationalism

The irony of and the cruelty of Netanyahu is that the Arabs have had an Arab Peace Initiative since 2002 putting this clearly on offer. And of course the Zionist phony rhetoric in our country and in our politics and of course in Israel is there’s no one to talk to, implacable foes, and it’s exactly the opposite. For 24 years the Arabs have said, make two states, then we’re going to get along fine. We’re going to normalize relations. We’re going to…

We’re going to have a normal peaceful Middle East. Okay? Netanyahu’s whole point, the whole party was, we’ll never let that happen. And don’t you dare try to negotiate it. We kill the people we negotiate… That try to negotiate with us.

The other option is that it all slips away from these crazed people, and what ends up is a basic reality that Israelis have settled physically all over the West Bank and all over places that were to be the Palestinian state, and they say, well, there’s no way those populations are ever going to leave. And then there’s an obvious answer and not a bad answer, which is, okay. We have one state. You can call it Israel Palestine.

And there are plenty of places in the world like that. It’s called binationalism. It means two nations in one country. And I mentioned Belgium as a… As an example.

Belgium actually has five parliaments. It’s a very interesting political system. It’s got a national parliament. It’s got a parliament for the Flemish speaking population. It’s got a parliament for the French speaking population.

It’s got a parliament for Brussels, and it’s got a parliament for a small German speaking population. It’s got five parliaments. Well, could have basically three. You could have a Jewish Israeli parliament, you could have an Arab parliament, and you could have an umbrella, which would be the federal state. There are plenty of places in the world that operate like that and operate peacefully like that.

And so this may be what happens in the end also, that there is not two states and there’s not one racist state killing half the citizens or half the people because they’re not citizens, I should underscore. But rather there becomes one nation, one state, actually one nation, let’s… Or one state, sorry. You could say two nations or two ethnicities, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and they self govern for many, many issues, and they govern together for the things that have to be governed together. And maybe that’s what’s going to happen in the future.

There’s a pretty significant movement of Jews who for a long time, those who opposed the racism that has been underway for decades, most Jews, like myself, said two states. Just have two states. The Arabs have said it. That’s the international law. That’s the easy way.

But I can tell you there’s a quite significant movement within the Jewish world which says, “Okay, Israel didn’t want two states, one state, that’s fine. So we don’t have to divide it anymore, maybe it can’t be divided, but you create institutions so that Jewish people can govern themselves in many ways, in education, in religious affairs, in community affairs. The Palestinian Arabs do the same thing on their side, and on joint issues like the water supply, and on transport and on other things, then you have a national government which combines the two.” And there are many interesting devices. There are issues, for example, that are so important that they’re called reserved issues that both sides have to agree.

It’s not just a majority vote, but you have to have an agreement on the Jewish side. You have to have an agreement on the Arab side in order to reach the national outcome in areas that are reserved in that manner. All of this is to say, Tucker, Israel in its current form, in its quest for greater Israel, in what, sorry to say, our US ambassador, Mr. Huckabee, said, reading some line of the Bible in the most unbelievably naive way, I have to say, unlearned and naive and extraordinarily wrong way, said, okay, they can have all this land. They can have all of it, maybe all the way to the Euphrates, he said, which is not exactly the way that we’re going to find peace in this world. That is over.

That is at an end because that could only conceivably survive with American backing. And, yes, American politicians backed that for the last thirty years. They got a lot of campaign financing. Like you said, it was just the normal thing to do. They didn’t think the American people were watching.

Oh, so sorry for the Iraq war. Oh, so sorry for this war. Oh, so sorry for this war. But now the American people are actually watching, and they want the wars to end. And Donald Trump did us a favor because he campaigned in 2024 to end these wars.

Okay. He broke his promise very vulgarly, but he opened the eyes of the American people. We know that he lied, and we know that the costs of this are huge, and we don’t want it anymore.

Closing Thoughts

TUCKER CARLSON: I am so grateful that you said that because I was making this case at dinner last night with someone that for all the sting of the betrayal and the horror and the outrage you feel at watching what’s happening, it is also Trump that by betraying his own voters and his own country revealed the deep, deep architecture of our government. And once you see it, you can change it.

He promised. We’ve… We’re not going to do this anymore, and it was a good promise. And a lot of Americans bought into it. I did.

JEFFREY SACHS: Yeah. No. And now we don’t want this anymore.

TUCKER CARLSON: No. And I don’t think we’re going to get it anymore. Jeffrey Sachs, thank you. That… There’s no one who could have summarized that as crisply and wisely as you did. So thank you for taking the time to do it.

JEFFREY SACHS: Always great to be with you, Tucker. Thank you. See you soon.

TUCKER CARLSON: See you.

That’s it for us tonight. Thanks a lot for watching. We’ll be back next Wednesday night at 6PM eastern.

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