Netanyahu: The Man Behind the "Gazalago" Curtain
Or, How Trump's Gaza Takeover Plan May Be A Cover For Something Much More Sinister
Before I dive into the subject of this week’s post, let me highly recommend John T. Psaropoulos’s excellent Substack blog Hellenica.
Hellenica has been an especially excellent source for in-depth reporting on the war in Ukraine. For example, check out Mr. Psaropoulos’s piece on the “disappearance” of North Koreans from the battlefield in Kursk (Russian territory currently under Ukrainian control).
I hope to do more on Ukraine in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, I am sure you heard all about Trump’s ludicrous “concept of a plan” for a U.S. takeover of Gaza. You may have heard him pitch it as the new “riviera of the Middle East”—so long as the U.S. pushes out the people who actually live there. You may even recall that, initially, he did not even rule out putting “boots on the ground” to accomplish this goal.
“No foreign wars,” huh?
But I digress. Unfortunately, behind this insane proposal for mass ethnic cleansing is a far more dangerous and far more realistic plan for the removal of the Gazan people from Gaza. Enter Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich, stage right.
Let me explain. These three Israeli politicians make up what I would call the Unholy Trinity of the Israeli far-right. In Trump, these three men see an opportunity to declare war against “the very idea of Palestine itself.” As Michael and I said in our post from January of last year, “[t]he battlefield” of this war against Palestine at large “will stretch from Gaza, to the West Bank, and to the very ends of the world stage. And the casualties of [the] second war, as remarkable as it sounds, [may] completely overshadow the casualties of the first.”
Unfortunately, that prediction appears to be coming to pass. On January 21, the day after his inauguration, Trump canceled the Biden Administration’s sanctions against Israeli settlers in the West Bank. That same day, the Israeli government launched what Netanyahu called “large-scale and significant” raids on the West Bank city of Jenin.
About a week later, Israeli settlers held a conference on creating settlements in Gaza. Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir attended that conference, along with 12 members of Netanyahu’s Likud party. Let me be clear: the conference is a show of support for ethnic cleansing.
And now, their position has the clear and practically unequivocal support of the U.S. government. Even apart from repudiating Biden’s attempts to hold lawless Israeli settlers accountable via sanctions, multiple high-level and prominent Trump Administration have endorsed seizing the West Bank wholesale.
For instance, Trump ambassador to the U.N. Elise Stefanik has said she agrees with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir that Israel possesses a “biblical right” to claim the West Bank. Similarly, Pete Hegseth, our new sexual assault case-settling Secretary of Defense, has promoted “applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria,” the Israeli far-right’s go-to name for the Palestinian territory. Finally, Trump’s soon-to-be confirmed ambassador for Israel has claimed that Israel “‘has title deed’ to the area.”
By themselves, these reckless statements create enough concern for the future of the West Bank, Gaza—and Israel, for that matter. Why should far-right Israeli religious zealots have any shame, when the government of the United States is parroting their pro-settlement talking points word-for-word?
But then, here comes Trump, with his plan for depopulating Gaza to create “prime real estate.” Is he serious, you ask? Except you may be asking the wrong question. As one former ambassador to Israel put it, “even just floating the idea risked provoking more extremism” (emphasis mine).
Yet maybe that was the point. Maybe Trump’s crazy proposal was tailor-made to make Netanyahu’s seem tame by comparison. Maybe the notion of having the U.S. take over Gaza was and is a distraction to make an Israeli takeover of Gaza sound more plausible.
If so, let me say this: we the American people and we the international community must never let this stand. Israel’s claim to Gaza and the West Bank fails on international law grounds and it fails even on biblical grounds. Israelis and Palestinians share a common genetic tree and a common cultural heritage that traces back to the Holy Land. The peoples of Gaza and the West Bank are as much the descendants of the biblical Hebrews as any modern-day Israeli.
Neither Netanyahu, nor Ben-Gvir, nor Smotrich, nor even “the Leader of the Free World” can erase the Palestinian people’s claim on the land of their fathers.
Because might does not make right. Even if it is American might.