Rights and Accountability 8 December 2024
The other side of the coin – Donald Trump – is back, already threatening “the Middle East,” and presumably Gaza in particular, before he even returns as president to the White House.
The rhetorically thuggish Trump isn’t running away from credible assertions of genocide in Gaza, as the co-perpetrating Biden administration has because it refuses to admit what it has wrought. Instead, the future president is embracing President Joe Biden’s Gaza genocide and signaling he’s ready for more horror there or perhaps in Iran if he decides to push the envelope in a different way.
Trump declared on 2 December: “Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.”
Nobody does genocide and war crimes as repeatedly or as proudly in the moment as the United States government – from the massacres of the Indigenous population to transatlantic enslavement to the carnage and death inflicted in southeast Asia, Iraq and now Gaza (with weapons from the US).
Drop Site News does, however, note that Trump’s comment “appears timed to position himself to claim credit for any progress in ceasefire talks, as negotiations between Hamas and Egyptian mediators are already underway.”
That’s certainly possible.
But his cruel language becoming realized policy should not be ruled out completely. At some point, someone may well stand up to his threats and dare him to follow through, expending more taxpayer money while risking the same deadly quagmires and unexpected consequences his predecessors made for themselves.Senator Ted Cruz of Texas deemed Trump’s comment to be “fantastic” and “exactly right,” crowing in the midst of the Gaza genocide and the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for two Israeli leaders that “I do think the enemies of America are terrified of Donald Trump.”
Perhaps. Trump brings to the table childlike rage backed by the world’s most fearsome arsenal of weapons. That combination cannot easily be dismissed.
It’s the “Madman diplomacy” of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger on steroids, intended to make potential adversaries cower before an unpredictable American president.
It will be backed by Republican politicians who have called to bounce the rubble in Gaza, to level the place and to turn the coastal territory into a parking lot.
Trump’s head space is difficult to judge as is the advice he will receive this time in office. The people he has named to key positions in recent weeks, however, have invariably been strongly pro-Israel, including favoring Israeli expansionism and Crusader ideology.
But there is also a new Republican determination to avoid forever wars. Consequently, it’s possible Trump will fall back on destabilizing assassinations rather than initiating new wars in order to back up his bellicose rhetoric.
Trump blowhards
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s comment received widespread support from those Americans who are enthusiastic about pounding Gaza.
John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, trumpeted the move: “That is what we call ‘not a threat, but a promise.’”
Longtime anti-Palestinian commentator Ben Shapiro called it an “amazing statement,” saying Trump could cut all humanitarian aid to Gaza – a stunning dereliction of responsibility at a time when the ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, in part, for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.”
This is the same Ben Shapiro who once said: “Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue.” He then added that “settlements rock,” while ignoring that they are illegal under international law.Shapiro has laughably claimed the statement was taken out of context, but he added context more than an hour later, presumably after seeing the negative response to the tweet.
And he doubled down on that very same day, making sure to direct his racism at Palestinians, specifying that it’s “just Pals [Palestinians] and their allies” who “like open sewage and blowing things up.”
He’s an anti-Palestinian bigot. The words are crystal clear.Eyal Yakoby, a student activist and incoming graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also lauded Trump’s comment: “For anyone wondering, this is what leadership looks like. Our enemies should know that if you touch even a single hair on an American’s head, that there will be a heavy price to pay.”
This sentiment does not extend to American citizens killed and injured by the Israeli military. On that front, the US will make excuse after excuse for Israel and keep the military aid flowing to the apartheid state.
Yakoby, who appears to be a supporter of further Israeli expansionism, added: “The waffling and appeasement have never worked and does not work. Leadership is standing up and telling our enemies directly that if you hit us, we will hit you 10 times harder. That is how you create deterrence.”
Gaza genocide
What Yakoby, a Gaza genocide denier, calls “deterrence” has led to what Amnesty International this week reported on as genocide.
The now-anticipated unfounded claim of anti-Semitism was quickly leveled against the group:
Members of Congress quickly joined the fray with some signing a statement calling the report “slanderous.”They write that Amnesty International “admittedly and nefariously created its own definition of the legal term ‘genocide’ in their report simply to fit their defamatory narrative.”
Amnesty International, however, is merely asserting that genocide can take place “in both peacetime and in war.”
On pages 101 and 102 of the report, Amnesty International states: “The organization considers that the Genocide Convention must be interpreted in a manner that ensures that genocide remains prohibited in both peacetime and in war and that ICJ [International Court of Justice] jurisprudence should not be read to effectively preclude a finding of genocide during war.”
These congressional claims, however, don’t withstand scrutiny. It’s just misdirected anger resulting from Israel’s fast-deteriorating reputation. According to the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard: “Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.”Callamard, after explicitly terming the Israeli onslaught in Gaza a “genocide,” added: “States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.”
This should put leaders such as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on notice for promoting genocide, but so far they have little to fear from an international legal system that protects them. In fact, under the Biden-Harris watch, this genocide is destroying common conceptions of human rights and war crimes due to western leaders’ disregard for Palestinians.
Strikingly, Callamard did not ignore Israel’s actions before the genocide. “Taking into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas.”
Who in the Trump administration will tell the incoming president about Israeli apartheid and that the reason there are so many refugees in Gaza – approximately 70 percent of the population there – is because of their dispossession in 1948 by Zionist militias and the Israeli military?Mike Huckabee, Trump’s choice to be ambassador to Israel, certainly can’t be expected to do so. Huckabee is on record saying “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.” He thinks naming them is “a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”
Dispossession and genocide against Palestinians are two sides of the same coin pursued by Republican and Democratic leaders alike.
Tags
- Donald Trump
- Biden administration
- Drop Site News
- Ted Cruz
- Richard Nixon
- Henry Kissinger
- Crusaders
- John Spencer
- Ben Shapiro
- Benjamin Netanyahu
- Yoav Gallant
- West Point
- Modern War Institute
- Turkey
- Qatar
- Eyal Yakoby
- Amnesty International
- Gaza genocide
- Agnès Callamard
- Genocide Convention
- Joe Biden
- Kamala Harris
- Mike Huckabee
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