Jeffrey Sachs on Netanyahu’s Struggle to Keep Control of the World’s Most Bloodthirsty Ethnostate

The mask comes off during Israeli elections. Jeffrey Sachs on the future of the world’s most bloodthirsty ethnostate. Jeffrey D. Sachs is a Columbia University professor and leading foreign policy expert. He has advised multiple UN Secretaries-General and serves as an SDG Advocate to António Guterres. He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and spent over 20 years as a professor at Harvard University. He is also the author of The Ages of Globalization (2020) and Ethics in Action for Sustainable Development (2022). Dutch: Use code TUCKER for $80 off your vet care at https://dutch.com/tucker Joi + Blokes: Use code TUCKER for 65% off your labs and 20% off all peptides and supplements at https://joiandblokes.com/tucker American Financing: NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. Average savings based on borrowers who save over $199.99. Call 800-685-5696 or visit http://www. AmericanFinancing.net/Tucker. Last Country Supply: Put your fears at ease. Stock up on survival essentials at https://lastcountrysupply.com/tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Tucker Carlson?

  Well, it's election season, and by the way, not just here in the United States, where in six days, we've got the fabled midterm elections, but also internationally. There are important elections around the world this month. And if you're tuned into the news, if you're a good citizen, you're paying attention to the rest of the world, you already knew that. You may have been following the elections in, I don't know, Bosnia, or Bulgaria, or the Czech Republic, or Canada, which had elections this month, this month. And the elections in Canada really matter, of course, because Canada is our neighbor. We share the longest international border in the world with Canada, 5,500 miles. It's our second-largest trading partner after Mexico, our other neighbor.

• 0:43Tucker Carlson?

  We do twice as much trade with Canada as we do with China. Did you know that? Probably not. Did you know they had elections this month? Probably not. Because while the Canadian-US relationship is critical to the United States, by definition, almost nobody in the United States pays attention to it, very much including our leaders and the media class that do their bidding. So there's like no coverage of Canada whatsoever. So if there was one foreign election you likely heard about this month, in fact, this week, it was a parliamentary election in Israel, which is very far away, farther from here than, well, Bosnia, certainly farther than Canada, and much smaller.

• 1:25Tucker Carlson?

  It's a country of fewer than 10 million people, with whom we do very little trade, really. We give them a lot of stuff, but there's not really a meaningful trade relationship there. If all trade ended with Israel tomorrow, it would be a net benefit to American GDP. So it's not like it's a critical relationship objectively. If you're studying statecraft and the balance of power internationally, Israel would really probably be at the end of the semester, because it doesn't really matter. But it matters a great deal to the American media, for whatever reason. And so the coverage of the Israeli election in the US this week was quite intense. And in some of that coverage, you'll notice really an emotional intensity, an investment

• 2:07Tucker Carlson?

  that goes beyond mere journalism, and suggests that the people following the Israeli election are deeply vested in the results, maybe in an almost unhealthy way. Watch Fox News host Mark Levin talk about the Israeli elections in one of the most revealing clips we've seen in quite some time. This is Mark Levin from yesterday.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  To my fellow patriots in Israel, to the right wing, to Likud and the other coalition parties, if you do not get out and vote right now, you're going to lose your country. You're going to lose your country to leftists, to self-promoters, to Arabs who hate your country, want a Palestinian state, want to undermine your defense, what a complete and utter disaster. You stand between all of that, that tyranny, and the great nation of Israel.

• 3:00Tucker Carlson?

  So there are a couple of things to notice. One, here you have a Fox News host weighing in in great and passionate detail on an election in a foreign country as a partisan. "To the people of Israel, to my fellow patriots in Israel," he says. So leaving aside the red-hot question of dual loyalty, what is that? Have you ever been so exercised about somebody else's election? We hope not. And if you ever find yourself getting that exercised about somebody else's election, you probably should move there and vote in it, and stay there, because that's the country you care about most. That's clearly the country that Mark Levin cares about most. But the second thing that you notice was a word that he used that kind of invalidates a lot of the arguments he's been making for the past 30 years, he and the rest of the

• 3:45Tucker Carlson?

  Israeli lobby in the United States. And the word he used was Arabs. "You have to vote," he told his fellow patriots in Israel, "because if you don't, the Arabs will take over and destroy your country." Now, which Arabs is he talking about? The Arabs that live in the surrounding countries around Israel that threaten its existence? The Arabs that caused the rest of us to have to affirm our undying support for Israel's right to exist, because it's a tiny nation surrounded by enemies? We have been told for 60 years? No. He's not talking about Hamas. He's talking about Arabs, Arabs, who live within Israel and who are Israeli citizens. He's talking about the people who've been there longer than any of Mark Levin's friends

• 4:30Tucker Carlson?

  by far, in fact, since the beginning of recorded history. He's talking about the indigenous population of the country, of Israel. And not just the indigenous population of Israel, not Greater Israel. We're not talking about the poor benighted people in Gaza, or the West Bank, or even East Jerusalem. We're talking about like just normal Israeli citizens, who we have been told for lo these many decades are participants in Israel's democracy. Because in case you haven't heard, Israel is not simply a democracy, but the only democracy in the Middle East. And that's why the United States has a moral obligation to stand with Israel.

• 5:12Tucker Carlson?

  And that's why our politicians sign its bombs, which we provide and they use against the Arabs outside their borders, who are threatening Israel's democracy. 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.

• 5:55Tucker Carlson?

  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, who are permanent residents of

• 6:39Tucker Carlson?

  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 like creepy genocidal ethno-state that kills people for having the wrong DNA. No, that's like, 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 like how you run a country, because they learned lessons from what the Nazis did. Which two restate, in case you missed that history lesson?

• 7:20Tucker Carlson?

  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, if 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 at every time in history. There really is one lesson of the entire 20th 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

• 8:04Tucker Carlson?

  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 kind of 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 kind of 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

• 8:49Tucker Carlson?

  that would be a disaster, because it might undercut the project, which is not a democratic project.

• 8:56Tucker Carlson?

  The project is building an ethno-state based on your DNA, not on your beliefs, on your DNA. Because of course, it was based on your beliefs, there would be a religious test to move to Israel, but there's not. There's ineffective genetic test. You have to have a mother who's connected to the project. So it's by your blood. So that's an ethno-state. Now, you could argue, you know, nations have a right to construct ethno-states if they want, and Israel's not the only ethno-state in history, that's for certain. In fact, through history, most states have been ethno-states. In fact, until recently, almost all states have been ethno-states. So you could, 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

• 9:37Tucker Carlson?

  that the existence of an ethno-state is acceptable to the leaders of Western countries because they spend the rest of their day, when they're not defending this ethno-state in the Middle East, attacking the idea of an ethno-state and denying their citizens the right to create ethno-states. Like, that's the whole project. So it's a little bit weird. And here you have Mark Levin just sort of casually admitting that, nah, 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. Ooh. So then you think, well, okay, that's Mark Levin. Like, what does he know? He's got a weekend show on Fox. Like, he's not really an arbiter of anything

• 10:20Tucker Carlson?

  important. He's just like a blowhard, an increasingly unhappy-looking blowhard, shooting videos of himself as he walks down the, shuffles down the sidewalk. So maybe, like, within Israel, at the level of like, the people who run it, people are more diplomatic and, you know, 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 like, the lesson of Dr. Sturmer? By the way, the editor of Dr. Sturmer was executed after the Second

• 11:04Tucker Carlson?

  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, you know, 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. Like, we know that, and we've been teaching our kids that for, well, 80 years. So it would be a surprise if within Israel, the political class, whose salaries we effectively pay for here in the United

• 11:47Tucker Carlson?

  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 30 years. 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

• 12:30Tucker Carlson?

  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? Hmm. What kind of software could be prohibited to mobilize voters? In what democratic system

• 13:14Tucker Carlson?

  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

• 13:59Tucker Carlson?

  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 have 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

• 14:41Tucker Carlson?

  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. 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

• 15:21Tucker Carlson?

  to be representing. And it wasn't just him. 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, et cetera, et cetera. 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

• 16:02Tucker Carlson?

  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 7A 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 Justice has emptied the law of substance and enabled their candidacy in violation of the law."

• 16:47Tucker Carlson?

  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

• 17:30Tucker Carlson?

  and have been since the foundation of the State 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

• 18:15Tucker Carlson?

  genocide that your government has been committing for the past 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

• 18:58Tucker Carlson?

  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 will 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

• 19:43Tucker Carlson?

  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...

• 20:08Tucker Carlson?

  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 24 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 in the United States Senate, and another is the US Ambassador to Israel, and there are a whole bunch of them.

• 20:52Tucker Carlson?

  And of course, you know, 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, 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. 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.

• 21:37Tucker Carlson?

  You don't want the kind of dark temptation to mock his eyebrows, you know, all the kind of ancillary potential problems with playing a Ben Shapiro clip. But this is just too perfect, and so we're gonna break our own rule and do it. So here is Ben Shapiro today with a whole cast of people who agree with him, all sort of nodding, "Oh, yeah, Ben Shapiro, good point." Watch their faces as he just says, "You know what? We're just gonna have to strip voting rights from Arabs in Israel." Watch this.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  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 that they're allowed to sit in the Knesset in the first place. The Supreme Court of Israel, there's been a lot of talk about judicial reform. It seems to me that if the Supreme Court of Israel were worth its salt, if you're gonna ban the Kahaneists, which is totally fine and appropriate, if you're gonna ban the Kahaneists, 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 would seem some pretty baseline stuff. The fact they haven't is pretty astonishing.

• 22:43Tucker 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 like an American, a defender of the American system, and a defender of Israel, because Israel has a version of the

• 23:26Tucker Carlson?

  American system, participatory democracy, and enlightened liberal view of the world, both heirs of Western civilization. Here you have that guy pulling off the mask and just saying, "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.

• 24:10Tucker Carlson?

  And this is not a defense of Hamas, which has 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, 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

• 24:52Tucker Carlson?

  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, is 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.

• 25:34Tucker Carlson?

  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, can't get in or out without permission from the Israeli authorities. So it is an effect in 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

• 26:15Tucker Carlson?

  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 just 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

• 26:58Tucker Carlson?

  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 to say, "Well, guys, that's a little over the top." But of course, that's all cover. 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 gonna 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.

• 27:43Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 28:24Tucker Carlson?

  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, there was no sound, but you can watch carefully what is happening.

• 29:06Tucker Carlson?

  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 are, seem to be six of them, of these Israeli Taliban. Oh, and there they go, there are seven of them, and they light his car on fire and run away. 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

• 29:47Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 30:27Tucker Carlson?

  And what happened next? Keep in mind, he's an American. Well, 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, all right now.

• 31:11Tucker Carlson?

  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 60 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.

• 31:41Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 31:55Tucker Carlson?

  And that guy meets secretly with the US ambassador, who's one of his great champions, and no one does anything about it.

• 32:03Tucker Carlson?

  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 Theodore Herzl thought up this whole program.

• 32:26Tucker Carlson?

  And our political class has pledged allegiance to this country, which, you know, you could argue wasn't always insane. It wasn't always a bloodthirsty ethno state 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.

• 32:48Tucker Carlson?

  And so because for the last 30 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 fringe. See, they hate America and they hate Israel.

• 33:01Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 33:24Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 33:35Tucker Carlson?

  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

• 33:52Tucker Carlson?

  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. Like, no one will ever vote for that again.

• 34:32Tucker Carlson?

  But it's just amazing

• 34:35Tucker Carlson?

  that it's gone on for so long. It's amazing. We say it and we mean it. Dogs are one of God's greatest blessings. If you love your dogs, you want to take care of them. But vet care has made it impossible for people to keep their dogs healthy. It's so expensive. Private equity has rolled in and made your vet bills out of control. So a lot of people don't go to the vet. Don't be embarrassed about that. Maybe you can't afford it. So a while back, we did one of our favorite interviews ever with Joe Spector from a company called Dutch. And he sat down with us and explained how this is happening and how private equity now owns up to a third of all the vet practices in the country. And prices are raising at double the rate of inflation.

• 35:15Tucker Carlson?

  It's astounding, and your dog or your cat is likely to be the victim. And that's why we love our partner with Dutch. It's the fastest growing pet telehealth service, and we use it. One price for the whole year, no exam fees, no visit fees, no surprise bill at the front desk. You know exactly what you're paying for before you even start. And by the way, a lot of vet visits don't require a visit. And a lot of people's dogs hate going to the vet, including mine. So if you can do it with a vet over the phone, it's way better for everybody. You get real licensed veterinarians, unlimited visits and follow-ups, as many as your dog or cat needs. One plan covers up to five animals. If they need a prescription, Dutch ships it right to your house, free shipping. Right now, Dutch is giving listeners of this show $80 off.

• 35:59Tucker Carlson?

  That brings a full year of unlimited vet care down to $119 a year, the whole year, less one trip to the clinic. That's quality care you can really afford, and you're doing the right thing for your dog or cat. Go to dutch, D U T C H dot com slash Tucker, dutch dot com slash Tucker. Use the code Tucker for $80 off your first year. Your dogs, your cats, your budget, all of them will be grateful. So we thought it'd just be a perfect time, considering the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu may finally be coming to an end after 30 incredibly ugly and bloody years, or not.

• 36:37Tucker Carlson?

  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 50 years, who has 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.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Of course, anytime, Tucker.

• 37:22Tucker Carlson?

  Thank you. 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, where do you think Israel stands as of right now?

• 37:33Speaker 03

  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

• 37:58Speaker 03

  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, in the parliament, in the Knesset. And they could be the determining factor, actually, if, 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.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  And getting him out would be a profoundly beneficial thing for, 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

• 39:20Speaker 03

  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.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  And something much better, Tucker, of course, for the United States. Because Netanyahu, you know, 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, this would be my hope.

• 40:24Tucker Carlson?

  So, a couple of 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?

• 40:44Speaker 03

  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 General Eisenkopf 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.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  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.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  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

• 42:45Speaker 03

  of the West Bank, and of Gaza, then it's 50/50. And that's how it really should be. In fact, it should be 50/50. 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. 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.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  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, and it is racist anti-Arab, and it is violently anti-Arab, of course. So while Netanyahu and his side, including these monsters, Ben Gavir and Smotrich, are outright murderous, the other side I don't think is outright murderous.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  I hope not, and I don't think they are, but before the election, to prove their, you know, 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

• 44:59Speaker 03

  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.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  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

• 46:25Speaker 03

  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

• 47:09Speaker 03

  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.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  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 that clear expression, that of the 10 million people

• 48:33Speaker 03

  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.

• 48:49Tucker Carlson?

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• 49:32Tucker Carlson?

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• 50:10Tucker 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, you know, for years, and I know that that kind of talk is common in Israel. It has not been common in the United States amongst 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.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  Not even can't vote, can't even live.

• 50:46Tucker Carlson?

  Well, of course, they're being murdered.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  Yes, of course.

• 50:48Tucker Carlson?

  But, but, so they say, no, that's complicated and we're 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, you know, your religion is secondary to your citizenship. And it's therefore a democracy.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  They went to the polls, they voted.

• 51:11Tucker Carlson?

  But here you have, they're not saying that anymore. It's like, no, they can't have power because they're Arabs. Well, that's not democracy.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  No, it's even, it's even worse than that, Tucker, because today, with this big turnout and this success of the Arab parties, Netanyahu's 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, you know, what are we going to do?" And the other side might take support from the Arabs. But no, this is a fraud. They've stolen this country.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  So this is apparently what this Fox newscaster, 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. And that's the reality right now.

• 52:31Tucker Carlson?

  Well, it works in the short term, but in, 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 you do sort of wonder.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  And I, 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, which is being a murderous and racist state. I'm not saying every person in Israel is.

• 53:28Tucker Carlson?

  Of course.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  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 root, 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.

• 54:14Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  And, and he's done terrible things to our country, Tucker, of course.

• 54:30Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, well, that's what I'm mad about, right? I watched it. Yeah, no.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 54:34Tucker Carlson?

  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?

• 54:45Speaker 03

  Well, I think his being gone will be at least a break in the clouds or a break in, in this horrible storm. This man has been a disaster for 30 years. We're in the 30th 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.

• 55:30Speaker 03

  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 30 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.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  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.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  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. B-I-National states. Belgians 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, you know, 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.

• 57:39Speaker 03

  And, 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?

• 58:19Speaker 03

  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, absolutely. 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.

• 59:03Tucker Carlson?

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• 59:46Tucker Carlson?

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• 1:00:31Tucker Carlson?

  There's no chance.

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:00:55Tucker Carlson?

  I agree with you completely. I mean, but what a change. 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.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, because a lot of money, of course, 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. 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. Because we're decent people. And that is the basic point. They saw what this is all about. Now,

• 1:01:59Speaker 03

  the truth is, this has been going on for 30 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 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 them, "This is going to be the greatest war ever. Oh, and it's going to spread sunshine and light all over the

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  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

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  has been going on for 15 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 15 years, killed hundreds of thousands of

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  people, cost America a fortune, created disasters that continue to this day.

• 1:04:03Tucker Carlson?

  Flooded Europe with refugees.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  Of course. And created this mass backlash. And Europe is, you know, 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. 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."

• 1:04:29Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  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

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  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

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  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 30 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

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:07:01Tucker Carlson?

  So if you're following the news, there are some ominous signs out there, not to scare anyone watching, but for example, at the end of October, there was a giant cyber attack that knocked out big parts of the internet. And within days, the British government was telling its citizens to stockpile water and canned food. That's not good. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has told American military bases to operate independently for 90 days without outside electricity, water, or fuel. In other words, they don't trust utilities in this country. Huh. So, they're worried, really, among other things, about the risk of a cyber attack-driven collapse of our infrastructure. Governments acknowledge that is potentially going to happen. They're preparing for it. Are you preparing for it? That's the real

• 1:07:46Tucker Carlson?

  question. The reality is, the systems you depend on every day are more fragile than they look. So if the internet goes down, so do most other things in our society, including your bank, and your gas station, and your grocery store. And that's one of the reasons we started Last Country Supply. We believe that everyone is ultimately responsible for himself and his family, period. You need heat, you need light, you need food, you need water, and above all, you need a plan to get those things. And you will find them, the essentials, at Last Country Supply. You don't have to be a prepper, you just have to care about your family. Make sure you are prepared. Go to lastcountrysupply.com/tucker. So I always thought of Israel, having visited it a lot, and enjoyed myself every

• 1:08:30Tucker Carlson?

  time, I always thought of it as kind of a European country with mostly European attitudes, or European-inflected attitudes, with kind of Eastern charm. But, you know, 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, 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 general attitude in Israel toward religious extremism changed?

• 1:09:12Speaker 03

  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 Theodore Herzl. He knew nothing about it. He knew nothing about rabbinic Judaism. And by the way, the rabbis, the rabbis of the late 19th century and early 20th century, and many rabbis until this day, are against the whole idea of Zionism.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  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 for the Jewish people." And so, this was not a religious movement.

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  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, before and after the Balfour Declaration. When I started going to Israel, my first visit was in 1972, so 54 years ago. There were religious neighborhoods, of course, and religious communities.

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  But Israel was a kind of, mostly a 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

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:12:38Speaker 03

  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 Gavir. And his party is called Jewish Power. It's astounding. And, you know, 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.

• 1:13:23Speaker 03

  He's a monster. And he represents what emerged in the 70s and the 80s and 90s. 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. And it's the opposite of Jewish ethical teachings.

• 1:14:01Speaker 03

  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 7th century B.C. that was a kind of, a political tract in the style of the Mesopotamian glory writing of those centuries, where the kings said, "I killed all my opponents.

• 1:14:45Speaker 03

  I am the great conqueror." And this is exactly in that style, as many scholars have shown, probably King Josiah in the 7th century B.C. 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, it's beyond belief.

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  And so completely the opposite of what 2,000 years of rabbinic Judaism is all about. But it's a new kind of, they call it, you know, 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 non-citizens. And these are all the options that are being played out right now. So, Tucker, this is something new.

• 1:16:04Speaker 03

  This was not Israel 30, or 40, or 50 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's teachings, let me put it that way, not on the basis

• 1:16:42Speaker 03

  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

• 1:17:27Speaker 03

  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 murders, which is extraordinary. It's exactly the opposite of Christianity, and I would say it's exactly the opposite of Judaism. And, but it got hijacked in a fervor of extreme racist nationalism. And it grew in the 70s, 80s, 90s.

• 1:18:05Speaker 03

  I watched it grow, because it was not there in 1972, and it was only showing its face in the 80s, 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, Mayor Kahane, who was the progenitor of Ben Gavir's extremism, came to the forefront. And Netanyahu, because he's a...

• 1:18:43Speaker 03

  By the way, everyone I know, 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, you know, one of the subtexts of the last few days is supposedly that even

• 1:19:26Speaker 03

  President Trump is telling Netanyahu, "Well, you gotta get rid of Ben Gavir and Smotrich." And supposedly, you know, 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 anti-Semitic. It's the ultimate, complete lie and untruth.

• 1:20:11Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:20:43Tucker Carlson?

  Amen.

• 1:20:43Speaker 03

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

• 1:20:58Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:20:59Speaker 03

  The opposite of it.

• 1:21:01Tucker Carlson?

  I love that. So, one last question, Jeff. You mentioned Myar Kahane, and it's Susan American, I think, from New York, murdered in the end in New York. But 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.

• 1:21:30Tucker Carlson?

  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, like, what does Israel do as that happens?

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  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,

• 1:22:30Speaker 03

  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. You know, it's still pending, this attempt to merge Israeli security and US security,

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  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

• 1:23:50Speaker 03

  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

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  different scenarios, but basically, the Arabs and the Jews are going to be roughly 50/50 for the next 20 or 30 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. 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.

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  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. 24 years, the Arabs have said, "Make two states. Then, we're gonna get along fine. We're gonna normalize relations. We're gonna, 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."

• 1:25:57Speaker 03

  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 gonna 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.

• 1:26:41Speaker 03

  It's called "binationalism." It means two nations in one country. And I mentioned Belgium 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, you 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.

• 1:27:24Speaker 03

  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, one state, sorry. You could say two nations or two ethnicities, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. And they self-govern for many, many issues.

• 1:28:08Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:28:53Speaker 03

  So, you know, 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. You know, there are issues, for example, that are so important that they're called "reserved issues," that both sides have to agree.

• 1:29:36Speaker 03

  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...

• 1:30:02Speaker 03

  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, you know, 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

• 1:30:43Speaker 03

  that could only conceivably survive with American backing. And yes, American politicians backed that for the last 30 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

• 1:31:26Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:31:41Tucker 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 architecture of our government. And like, once you see it, you can change it.

• 1:32:05Speaker 03

  He promised, "We're not going to do this anymore." And it was a good promise, and a lot of Americans bought into it.

• 1:32:13Tucker Carlson?

  I did.

• 1:32:14Speaker 03

  And then, yeah, no, and now we don't want this anymore.

• 1:32:19Tucker Carlson?

  No, no. And I don't think we're going to get it anymore. Jeffrey Sachs, thank you. 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.

• 1:32:30Speaker 03

  Always great to be with you, Tucker.

• 1:32:32Tucker Carlson?

  Thank you.

• 1:32:33Speaker 03

  See you soon.

• 1:32:34Tucker Carlson?

  See ya. That's it for us tonight. Thanks a lot for watching. We'll be back next Wednesday night at 6:00 PM Eastern.