The masks are off. Trump and Israel have turned the planet into real estate
If you cared to watch the second inauguration of President Donald Trump, you did not have to look hard to see one Miriam Adelson sitting right behind the row of former US presidents: Joe Biden, George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
It would appear that her $100m campaign contribution bought her a seat in the Capitol Rotunda in a perfectly visible spot - that, and a position of influence within the new administration to push her pro-Israel views.
Support like this is why it’s little surprise that Trump has now announced a plan to essentially gift Gaza to Israel, by trying to force Jordan and Egypt to take in millions of brutalised Palestinians.
We need to understand the full picture here: Trump’s predecessor, Biden, was instrumental in facilitating the Israeli genocide in Gaza, during which at least 60,000 people are estimated to have been slaughtered.
Trump now wants to up the ante, with a goal to commit complete ethnic cleansing; to take over Gaza, and gift it to Israel, as he did the Syrian Golan Heights; and while Israel is committing the second round of its genocide in the occupied West Bank, to complete its armed robbery of Palestine in toto.
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The full collaboration of Biden and Trump in Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing are now on full display across occupied Palestine.
So who is ultimately driving this strategy, Israel or the US? It’s hard to tell. Israel is a colonial microcosm of US macrocosmic imperial delusions. Trump wants to take over Canada, Greenland and Panama, just as Israel grabs lands in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
Colonial conquest
There are, of course, solid economic and strategic reasons behind Trump’s designs for Canada, Greenland and Panama, and now Gaza for Israel - all punctuated by his megalomaniacal representation of the military logic of the US as a dysfunctional imperial bully.
Fully supported by the US, Israel wants to do in West Asia what Trump is deluding himself that he is doing in North and South America. The case of Colombia shows that he does not need to militarily invade and conquer these countries; he just threatens, browbeats and bullies them with tariffs.
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The US and Israel are now openly competing in imperial hubris and colonial conquest. Israel has always been the military base, the garrison state, installed in the Middle East by the British and now kept in place by the US and Europe to advance their imperial designs in the region.
At almost exactly the same time as Israel has spread its murderous military machineries across multiple fronts in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, we suddenly hear Trump laying claims to take over Canada, Greenland and Panama, and now Gaza for Israel.
Domestically, Trump is doing the same: systematically dismantling, streamlining and militarising the state. His battle against DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) camouflages a cold and cruel calculation of Social Darwinism: the survival of the scariest. His white supremacy is an ideological ruse for waging war against non-whites.
This is the logic of genocidal Zionism as racism writ large.
The masks and gloves are all off. The charade of democracy, rule of law, international order and national sovereignty - absolutely none of it means anything to this American-Israeli alliance, which is deluding itself into believing that it can make and remake the world.
What to this alliance is real estate, is to people around the world a homeland: their culture, civilisation, faith, art, architecture, music, and archaeological evidence of the deepest layers of their history. But people’s homelands and heritage mean nothing to these real-estate magnates.
Republicans and Democrats are no longer any different. A scarcity of resources, and face-to-face confrontations with Russia and China, have put the world at the mercy of US and Israeli military savagery and conquest. The US and its military outpost in the Israeli garrison state know only the language of vulgarity and violence.
Wretched of the earth
As Israel and the US increasingly become indistinguishable, to the point that top American leaders effectively hold the same positions as Israel - which feigns to be an independent entity - the world, too, increasingly resembles Palestine: stateless nations, or nations with feeble states ruling over them in the interests of Israel and US.
Look at the ridiculous Arab states around Palestine: what do they do except repress the democratic aspirations of their own peoples in the best interests of the US and Israel?
The result is historic asymmetric warfare, but not between the US-Israel axis on one side, and Iran and its so-called proxies on the other. Israel and its corrupt Arab partners are the real proxies of the US. The real battle is between the US and its proxies on one side, and the masses of humanity epitomised by a ravaged Palestine on the other.
Trump's idea of expelling Palestinians from Gaza and conquering their homeland for Israel is the most revolutionary idea of all time. He is just too stupid to understand what he is suggesting
People, nations and homelands mean nothing to US presidents, Republican and Democrat alike.
Suppose Trump succeeds in doing what he threatens: expelling Palestinians from Gaza and conquering their homeland. Then what? Aren’t millions of Palestinians already outside their homeland? You cannot stop them from demanding to return.
You send one million more Palestinian refugees to Jordan; they turn parts of Jordan into Palestine. You send another million to Egypt; they turn parts of Egypt into Palestine. Now Israel is surrounded by multiple Palestines. There is a reason why the ruling classes in Jordan and Egypt oppose this vicious idea.
Trump’s idea of expelling Palestinians from Gaza and conquering their homeland for Israel is the most revolutionary idea of all time. He is just too stupid to understand what he is suggesting. If you think the Palestinian intifadas and the failed Arab Spring were bad, then create new Palestinian enclaves across the region and see what happens.
However Trump and his allies might think they’re remapping the empire - conquer Gaza, claim Greenland, own Canada, rename the Gulf of Mexico, occupy Panama, foment fascist forces in Europe, demonise black and brown people in the US - we, the wretched of the earth, will ultimately inherit it.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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