Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: This is a genocidal regime in Israel now, murder incorporated Judge Napolitano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJt5Ud0wyko
One of the events that occurred while you and I were away was the very, very bellicose and almost rapturously received speech of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Congress. To me, he was playing to an audience that he bought and paid for, but he condemned free speech. He offered no path to peace. He was about as bellicose as I have heard him in English. What do you think his goal was? Was this for domestic Israeli political purposes or was he trying to scare the Congress into declaring war on Iran? Well, I think you're right. The Israel lobby owns the Congress. We've heard descriptions now pretty vivid about how AIPAC puts a shadow on each member of Congress. Many are directly bought. The others are threatened. This is a genocidal regime in Israel now. It's a murder incorporated. They do assassinations wherever. The most recent, of course, is the assassination of the Hamas political figure in Tehran, Iran. On the occasion of the inauguration of the new Iranian president. So Israel goes out of its way to say we're thugs, we'll kill anyone, we'll destroy anyone, we'll bomb anyone. They go out of their way and the US Congress stands up and applauds. It was one of the great shames of American politics in recent times to see this display of pitiful obeisance of the US to the mass murderer standing at the podium and in the context of tens of thousands of innocent women and children being slaughtered to the moment that Netanyahu talked. And then he gave a litany of complete lies. And after that has gone on with the continued murder and provocations of a wider war in the Middle East. So it's an unbelievable state of affairs of American politics right now. I found it repellent, Jeff, utterly repellent. One Republican, Thomas Massey stayed away, about a hundred Democrats stayed away, but the people that were applauding for him are supposedly our elected representatives and they were not acting as our elected representatives. They were acting as lapdogs to the figurehead of the class of people that fund their campaigns. It's- Absolutely. It's, you know, when I said to Ambassador Charles Freeman yesterday, when's the last time the Congress applauded a mass murderer? One of the viewers wrote in and said, Judge, the people applauding are mass murderers. They're paying for the mass murderer. They're of like mind with this mass murder. And that viewer was correct. I cannot recall anything like it before this. I found it such a shame that it was basically unwatchable. The idea that Netanyahu was invited at all to speak is one thing. The fact that he got dozens of standing ovations is simply a sign of the collapse of American politics. It is an utter collapse of American politics. Congress is worse than useless. It is completely corrupted. It is not a deliberative body. It is a body on the pay. And the Israel lobby has bought tens, hundreds of billions of dollars of weaponry for Israel's mass murder through its campaign contributions, as well as through the stupidity and naivete of many of the Congress. We shouldn't underestimate how ignorant many of these so-called representatives are. But I think we saw it as clear as can be. This is the collapse of American politics before our eyes. Is there any question in your mind that Netanyahu wants a war with Hezbollah, wants a war with Iran, and expects the United States to back him up? That's the purpose. It's been clear as day for months. He does everything as provocatively as possible. Murdering a senior political official in Iran, no less, on the occasion of the Iranian president's inauguration, no less, days after China had mediated a political accord between the different factions of the Palestinians. You cannot be more begging for a major war than he is doing right now. And of course, that war is predicated on all those fools in the U.S. Congress standing up to run in front of each other to say how many billions or trillions of dollars they'll vote for the Israelis to buy our weaponry so that they can fight this war and maybe bring us to Armageddon because that seems to be what some of them want as well. Israel's a nuclear armed power, and God knows what kind of complete global catastrophe will result from all of this, the way that we are behaving. What's amazing to me, Judge, is that Israel commits an outright political assassination on Iranian territory, and the only words out of the mouth of our Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, is we will protect Israel if it's attacked, not what is Israel doing? It shouldn't engage in political assassination, not a word of truth, but just to say, okay, I am going to stand there. The Pentagon will protect Israel as it commits its murders, as it expands the wars. This is American politics. Just to underscore how depraved Prime Minister Netanyahu's governing coalition is, last week, the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, actually debated whether or not it should be made lawful for Israeli soldiers to rape female and male Palestinian prisoners and whether Palestinian prisoners should summarily be executed in order to create more room in Israeli jails and other incarceration facilities. It's inconceivable to me that a country that calls itself a democracy could have such a debate and take it seriously. I don't think they actually voted on it, but this was the debate. One of the members of Netanyahu's party, the Likud, was asked, is it okay to rape somebody that is being held in detention? The answer is yes, of course, if it's a terrorist. In other words, these are murderers and torturers. It's straight out. These words about democracy, we use them the same way in the United States. This is a pretty meaningless term right now. It's a term that is applied not because there is participation of citizenry or honesty of government or transparency of government. It's purely a game, and it has become a license for mass murder to say we're a democracy. Then we can murder whoever we want that we don't like. That's whether it's the United States or whether it's Israel. Of course, the two are completely complicit in this, but they don't even hide any of this anymore. Nothing's hidden. This is just murder incorporated, period. Professor, talk to us a little bit about the Golan Heights, which only in the minds of Netanyahu and his colleagues, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, is part of Israel, but internationally is not. So 16 Druze, not Israelis, Druze were killed. The Israelis claimed they were killed by fellow Arabs and used that as an excuse to assassinate a Hezbollah leader. Everything is confused right now, like you're pointing out, but I think a starting point is something that almost went undiscussed in the United States last week, and that is that the International Court of Justice, which is the supreme body of international law, as if anyone in our political system cares about international law, ruled that Israel is illegally occupying the conquered territories of the war in 1967, which is 57 years ago. And what the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, said is that this entire occupation, including parts of the Golan Heights, including the West Bank, and including Gaza, is a complete violation of international law. Everything else spins off of that because Israel is in this illegal occupation, and the illegal settler movement, which is now the dominant political force of the state of Israel, is the underlying reason why there's no peace. It's impossible. What the Israeli government wants is to control all of these occupied territories illegally, to annex them into greater Israel, to rule over millions of Palestinian people who have political rights under international law reaffirmed repeatedly by the United Nations, ignored completely by the United States and Israel. And the result of all of this is torture, torture, mass incarcerations, mass violence, spreading war, and the United States saying, we'll always back these murderers no matter what they do. And that's the situation that we're in. Do you foresee a regional war with the United States involved? I mean, Netanyahu would be crazy to take Hezbollah on alone, wouldn't he? Well, he'd be crazy to take Hezbollah and Iran on even with the United States behind it because Israel will suffer terribly if they, quote, succeed in provoking this expanded war. This man is a mass murderer, Netanyahu. This man is leading a state which tortures, assassinates, and commits genocidal actions in Gaza. This is not a rational actor, much less a moral one, of course not. And he's leading Israel to disaster, and he is courting leading the United States to disaster. No one could look forward to this with equanimity, what he is hoping for.