Donald Trump, recently sporting his red ballcap modestly featuring the words “Trump Was Right About Everything,” is apparently in regular contact with Israel’s genocidal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Per Netanyahu, the most recent telephonic exchange had Trump expressing full support for the establishment of control over all of Gaza and the West Bank by the Israeli Army. Trump observed that Israel has been losing the “PR” (Public Relations) war over the carnage and must push ahead “with full force” to “finish the job” as quickly as possible.
There are also reports of a scheme perhaps launched during a White House meeting including Trump, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner which would give Palestinians willing to be ethnically cleansed a “relocation package” of $5000 and some other benefits to get the hell out. Where exactly they would go to is not very clear but it would eliminate the bad publicity if the Israeli army’s has to kill all of them. Gaza would then be freed up to develop the long-sought Trump Gaza Riviera under US trusteeship over the ruins and the tens of thousands of unburied bodies.
As the slaughter of mostly women and children in Gaza continues, the American public as well as voters in many European nations have turned sharply against Israel, presumably a manifestation of Trump’s “PR problem” for the Jewish state. But Israel is striking back with its own weapons, namely the tools that it has used to corrupt the government and media in the United States and all across Europe. There are numerous Jewish organizations as well as Christian Zionist churches backed by the ample funds contributed by Jewish billionaires that make sure that politicians and journalists know which side their bread is buttered on. But it is generally conceded that the most powerful component of the Israel Lobby is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC openly declares that its principal purpose is to strengthen the relationship between Israel and the United States. That actually in practice means subordinating US interests to those of the Jewish state but no politician or journalist on the make is going to defy AIPAC and cut off both the largesse and the political support. AIPAC says it has five million members, 17 regional offices, and “a vast pool of donors.” In 2022, it had 376 employees, an endowment of more than $10 million plus more than $79 million in revenue. AIPAC’s claims to be bipartisan – at its yearly policy conference in 2016 it featured both major parties’ nominees: Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.
One of AIPAC’s most prized initiatives is the arranging fully paid for trips by Congressmen and other prominent influencers to Israel, where they are wined and dined and fed the full panoply of lies that the Israelis use to justify their horrific agenda. The trips are in full violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) rules that organizations that operate on behalf of foreign governments must register and provide full information providing transparency both on their funding and their meeting with foreign government officials. As the last president to actually seek to have an Israel Lobby entity register was John F Kennedy, his fate might explain why none of the presidents since that time have attempted to do the same.
AIPAC’s latest trick was to send 22 House of Representative Republicans to Israel over the Congressional recess in August where they were hosted by Benjamin Netanyahu himself during what was dubbed a “week long educational seminar”. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. “The Prime Minister briefed the members of Congress on the war in the Gaza Strip and commented on the issue of the humanitarian assistance and the mendacious campaign being waged by Hamas against the State of Israel.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Christian Zionist know nothing, was leading a separate delegation of five leading Republicans. He was treated to a private dinner with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Meanwhile, waiting in the wings was a group of 23 Democratic Party congressmen who descended on Israel after the Republicans departed, also funded by AIPAC. The Democrat delegation was led by House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California and Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Steny Hoyer has led 20 Congressional trips to Israel.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has observed how members of the US Congress travel to Israel more than any other country by a large margin. In fact, they make “more trips to Israel than to the entire Western Hemisphere and the continent of Africa combined.” That fact added to the other blandishments offered by the Israel Lobby to “opinion makers” means that Congress and the Media are dramatically pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian to an extent which the American public does not share. In Israel there is no such problem, with a recent poll indicating that a majority of the Jewish Israeli public believing that Palestinians are little more than animals and “should be killed.”
The non-existence status of Palestinians has in fact been a hallmark of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy. The latest move to place the Palestinians in a separate category when it comes to their being allowed to exist at all has come from the US State Department, which has blocked the issuance of visas for the Palestinian delegation which was expected to attend the opening of the United Nations General Assembly session later this month in New York. The State Department said it was doing this to hold the Palestinian Authority and the PLO “accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace” and there were also evidence-free claims that some of the delegation might have terrorist connections with Hamas. This was followed a few days later by a decision by the State Department to block the issuance of visas to any holder of a Palestinian Authority passport, even including Palestinians who have family in the United States. The new measures will affect visas for medical treatment, university studies, visits to friends or relatives and business travel.
The visa moves come on top of the ghastly tale regarding the fate of a number of Gazan children who were badly injured or wounded by the Israelis and who had the good fortune to fall into the hands of a US-based charity called HEAL PALESTINE that was able to get them out of the Strip for medical treatment in the United States and elsewhere. The children were in need of major surgery and other complicated treatment and were accompanied by at least one of their parents in most cases as they were unable to function independently. The blocking of the children came soon after a right-wing American Zionist extremist, Laura Loomer, described Palestinians from Gaza being brought to the United States for treatment as “jihadis” and “a national security threat.” Inevitably, after America’s Zionist cheering section learned of the arrival of the sixty or so children in the US and went to work, the US State Department, blocked the issuance of any more visas and is now engaged in a “full and thorough investigation” into how the travel was approved and arranged in the first place.
The moves against Palestinian travelers apparently came after a Netanyahu request to Secretary of State Marco Rubio to lower the profile of Palestinians who are likely to be in a position to protest publicly against behavior of Israel in Gaza and on the West Bank. The visa and travel curbs also follow declarations by a number of US allies, including France, the United Kingdom and Canada, that they plan to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN in the coming weeks. Some Trump officials, including the president himself, have strongly opposed this drive for international recognition, which Israel has condemned.
Palestinian officials have inevitably denounced the US action as a deliberate attempt to silence them at a time when Gaza faces mass displacement, starvation, and what UN and International courts have described as a genocide. The US move has drawn sharp criticism from legal experts and international diplomats, who say it violates the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement, which obligates the United States in its role as the host country to facilitate access for all accredited delegations.
This has led to pushback by the United Nations itself, which reportedly has decided to stage the opening session of the General Assembly in Geneva instead of New York. In fact, in 1988, the UN similarly relocated to Geneva because the US denied a visa to Yasser Arafat, then head of the PLO. The current relocation is similarly intended to insure full Palestinian participation, particularly in a scheduled September 22nd segment which will be dedicated to Palestinian rights. President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to address the Assembly in Geneva, where he will call for international protection, recognition of Palestinian sovereignty, and accountability for Israeli war crimes.
The Geneva session is also expected to increase calls for action under the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, which empowers the General Assembly to recommend steps to take when the Security Council is unable to act due to political obstruction through exercise of vetos or lack of consensus. Advocacy groups are urging the UN to consider deploying an international protection force to Gaza and to suspend Israel’s privileges within the UN system until full humanitarian access is restored. It might also be useful to suspend the United States’ privileges, most particularly including its permanent veto rights on the Security Council, but, alas, that is perhaps asking for way too much!
Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.
