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justinspoliticalcorner · 2 months ago

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Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible:

As several commenters have pointed out, it’s hard to know how to react to Trump’s recent threats to conquer Greenland and/or Canada and/or Panama by force and/or economic coercion. Is this actually a plan? Is it a weird phantom his rage-calcified synapses produced when the microphone got thrust in front of him? Does taking it seriously lend it credence it shouldn’t have? Does mocking it downplay the danger? World leaders are in fact taking it seriously; France and Germany both warned Trump not to attack the borders of the EU. On social media, as you’d expect, people have taken a more mocking tone. One commenter joked that they would accept annexing Canada if every province got two senate votes. Fwiw, I very much doubt that Trump will actually try to annex Canada or Greenland. I fear that some sort of military intervention in Panama is a good bit more likely, given Trump’s racism and the long history of US presidents stealing shit from Latin America whenever they feel like it. But whether or not Trump implements any of his imperial schemes, I think it’s worth thinking through what conquest of Greenland, or Panama, or Canada would actually mean. Trump may not pursue this particular evil plan, but it’s worth explaining at least briefly why it’s evil, if only as a reminder of just how ugly Trump’s disdain for democracy is.

Disenfranchising millions

The quip about Canada electing Democratic Senators is telling I think, because it underlines a central problem of colonialism in democratic polities That problem is that, in theory, claiming more territory is also claiming more voters. If you engineer a hostile takeover of a territory, you’ve just added an electorate which hates you. If Canadians or Panamanians are allowed to vote in US elections, they will generally vote to regain independence first and foremost. At the very least, they are likely to vote against the asshole that launched the invasion. This is not a new or unique problem. Colonial representation, or the lack thereof, was the cause of the American Revolution; Britain wanted control over the colonists, but it did not want to give them votes in Parliament. Or, as another example, there’s Israel—a “democracy” only if you ignore the fact that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank can’t vote, because if they could vote they’d quickly demand an end to the occupation and control over their own territory and lives, which Israel’s government does not want to give them.

Trump is a fool, but he does have some sense of who votes for him and who doesn’t. And he’s consistent in saying that people who don’t vote for him should not be allowed to vote at all. Any annexation of Canada, or Greenland, or Panama, would be done on MAGA terms—which means that the people in those countries would be disenfranchised. Remember that Puerto Rico and other US territories still don’t have full US voting rights! Trump would absolutely not let Canadians vote for Democratic Senators. MAGA would say that Canadians needed time to learn the ways of American democracy, or he would say they were not loyal, and demand that anyone who wanted to vote had to swear an oath to the US, and to Trump personally. You might then get Senators from Canada—elected by an all pro-Trumpist far right rump electorate.

Colonialism is bad

Trump has of course claimed that Canada/Greenland/Panama would be better off under MAGA. The pretense is thin though; it’s obvious that Trump wants additional territory because he thinks it would make the US bigger and more powerful, and perhaps just because he likes the idea of taking stuff by force. This duplicates the historical disconnect between colonial rhetoric and colonial policy. Colonizers always say that they are working for the good of the colonized. Rudyard Kipling famously encouraged the US to invade the Philippines for the good of the Filipinos; “Fill full the mouth of famine/and make the sickness cease.” Walter Rodney in his classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) notes that “colonial apologists” claim that colonial rule was responsible for “economic modernization” and “political uplift and emancipation.”

Rodney puts a wrecking ball through those pro colonial arguments. He points out that European development in Africa was all aimed at extracting resources for the benefit of the colonizers, not the colonized. Europeans only built roads where they needed to get goods from the interior to the coast; they did not invest in infrastructure to allow Africans to travel in their own countries, or between two countries. When Africans wanted to learn new technologies and build new industries, they were systematically stifled; the British made it illegal for Ugandans to own cotton gins, for example.

[...]

Why aren’t you laughing?

Again, it feels ridiculous to talk seriously about what an invasion of Canada or Greenland or Panama might mean practically. It’s not going to happen. Why talk about the consequences for democracy, or the potential for exploitation and cruelty, or the consequences for reproductive rights? It’s all silliness. It’s just Trump babbling.

Disenfranchising Canadians by annexing Canada is a foolish move.

#Annexation #Annexation of Canada #Canada #Donald Trump #Trump Administration II #Colonialism

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mariacallous · 3 months ago

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Israeli journalist Barak Ravid drew gasps this month when he told the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly, “We are much closer to Israeli settlements being built in Gaza than hostages coming home from Gaza.” This is hardly news to anyone paying attention to Israeli governmental policy, but it introduced an unwanted chill into a conference that aimed to focus on “Jewish unity” and unspecified “support for Israel.”

Like other American Jews with strong connections to Israel, and dozens of friends and family members there, I have spent many a sleepless night worrying about the fate of the country, and furiously WhatsApping loved ones there to check on their safety. We may want to believe that Israeli leaders are trying to do what is best for their country and its residents. When we see news of yet another teenage soldier killed in Gaza or Lebanon, we want to believe that their sacrifice is not in vain but is making Israel safer.

But this is not a moment for surprise or for more rousing shows of vague “support for Israel.” It is a moment for anyone who cares about the future of the country and the people who live there to sound the alarm and wake each other up.

The settler movement has achieved a full takeover of the Israeli government, and they make no secret of their intentions: to resettle Gaza and officially annex the West Bank. Israeli leadership views the election of Donald Trump as clearing the path for this goal. Israel’s Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich said as much explicitly earlier this month. This past Sukkot, Likud members of Knesset took part in a conference on resettling Gaza held in a closed military zone meters from the strip, with the IDF protecting participants while pushing back hostage families who had come to protest.

High level Israeli officials have testified that Netanyahu has entirely abandoned the hostages and torpedoed any attempt to free them. Instead, he is continuing the war to advance his political survival and to allow for the reoccupation and resettlement of Gaza. One of his high level aides has been arrested on suspicion of passing information to a German newspaper, allegedly at the prime minister’s behest, in order to sway public opinion against a hostage deal. Even former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, fired apparently for supporting such a deal, has said publicly that there is no reason for the war to continue and that Israel is on its way to military occupation of Gaza.

There is increasing evidence that the army is implementing the “Generals’ Plan,” which aims to displace all 300,000-400,000 residents of Northern Gaza by preventing any humanitarian assistance from entering, bombarding the territory, preventing residents from returning and re-establishing an Israeli military occupation, followed inevitably by resettlement.

Meanwhile, Gaza itself has become a humanitarian disaster. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed — yes, including militants and terrorists, but also including thousands of children and entire families. The U.N. estimates that women and children make up 70% of those killed. Large-scale hunger and disease will likely only grow worse if and when Israel implements its recently passed laws that would prevent UNRWA, the main U.N. agency serving Palestinians, from operating there. In the West Bank, settlers carry out near daily violence against Palestinian villagers and farmers, with near complete impunity, often with the protection or assistance of the army.

The news that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant (along with Hamas’s Mohammed Deif, who is likely dead) engendered the expected cheers from the global left and defensive outrage from the Jewish and Israeli establishment. But for anyone who cares about Israel’s future, these arrest warrants should be cause for deep sadness and alarm. It is a tragic moment when the prime minister of the Jewish state has sunk so low — and brought the country so low — that he can credibly be accused of war crimes, while simultaneously torpedoing any internal inquiry that could have staved off the ICC warrants.

In early 2023, it seemed like the electoral ascendency of Israeli extremist parties, combined with the mass anti-government protests that rocked Israel, might shock mainstream American Jewry out of their usual uncritical support. A September 2023 protest against Netanyahu’s speech to the United Nations drew thousands of Israeli expats and American Jews, including prominent rabbis and communal leaders. Even some legacy Jewish organizations, not accustomed to criticizing Israel, registered their disapproval of the attempted judicial overhaul.

The horrific massacres of Oct. 7 moved many American Jews back into the more familiar narrative of “Israel under attack.” The shocking willingness of some pro-Palestine activists to justify or deny Hamas’s atrocities and to dehumanize Israelis, coupled with a rise in violence against Jews and Jewish institutions, channeled communal energy into fighting antisemitism. And the real threat from Iran, including direct missile attacks as well as more than a year of rocket fire from Hezbollah before this week’s truce, has generated existential fear for Israel.

Mourning and fear must not distract us from the reality that the biggest existential threat to Israel, and indeed to Judaism itself, is coming from Israel’s governing coalition. Israel is not an object of worship or vehicle for Jewish identity. It is a real country with an increasingly authoritarian government committed to perpetual war and settlement. This is both a moral travesty and a danger to the state and to Judaism.

More than 50 years ago, the religious Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned, “A calf doesn’t necessarily need to be golden; it can also be a people, a land, or a state.” Jews wearing kippahs and tzitzit who ransack Palestinian villages, sometimes even violating the basic laws of Shabbat to do so, who recite Shema while burning down a mosque, or who build a sukkah in a Palestinian village or in the middle of Gaza, have replaced worship of God with worship of power and sovereignty. They would happily destroy the actual state of Israel in order to achieve their dangerous vision of Jewish control over the entire biblical land of Israel, no matter the human or political cost.

Three decades ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu famously accused the left of “forgetting what it means to be a Jew.” But it is Netanyahu and his allies who have forgotten the basic foundations of Judaism. These include pidyon shevuyim — redeeming captives — considered one of the most important commandments, and the most basic commitment of a Jewish state, not to abandon its own people.

Some American Jews believe that we have no right to comment on matters of Israeli security, or that any criticism of Israel fuels antisemitism. And yet, too much of the American Jewish community gives a pass to organizations that have supported Netanyahu’s drive toward autocracy and settlements, and even refused the pleas of hostage families to call for a deal that will end the war in Gaza and bring their loved ones home. American Jews must not stand by as Israel descends into authoritarianism and messianism which are doing irreversible, generational damage. Supporting Israel can no longer mean sporting flag pins, attending ��unity” rallies, or trying to shut down any speech critical of Israel.

Rather, support for Israel and its people must mean standing with the Israelis desperately working to save their country from fanaticism, never-ending war and the settler agenda. Painful though it certainly is, supporting Israel today requires setting aside our disbelief that Israeli leaders could act with total disregard for the wellbeing of Israelis, let alone Palestinians. It means no longer giving Netanyahu and his ministers the endless benefit of the doubt.

American Jews can begin by sending our charitable dollars to the brave Israeli civil society organizations rather than to groups that explicitly or implicitly promote settlement and anti-democratic legislation. It means putting pressure on both the Netanyahu government and the U.S. administrations — outgoing and incoming — to end the war. We can demand that the U.S. follow its own laws and require Israel to adhere to the same guidelines for military aid that other countries do, including ensuring transparency in how aid is used. This includes enforcing the deadline for increasing the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Such measures are not an abdication of the security of Israelis, but rather a means of pressuring Netanyahu to end the war and bring home the hostages, allowing Israel to move toward internal investigations and new elections. And we can insist that our communal organizations stop burying their heads in the sand and instead push back on the Israeli government’s dangerous agenda.

It’s time for American Jews to take a strong moral stance for human life and human rights. This would be the truest expression of support for Israel and Israelis, as well as Torah and Judaism.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 26 days ago

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Democrats and grassroots activists gain traction

February 5, 2025

Robert B. Hubbell

Democrats and grassroots activists worked for a second day to oppose the unfolding coup against the Constitution by Musk and Trump. Activists held protests across the nation. Legal advocacy organizations partnered with aggrieved federal workers to file lawsuits, and federal judges issued orders halting unconstitutional executive orders signed by Trump. Democrats in Congress claimed they had placed a hold on all Trump nominees (although 22 Democrats voted for VA Secretary Doug Collins, and Senator John Fetterman voted to confirm Pam Bondi).

In short, there were positive signs that should inspire confidence among those who care about democracy and our Constitution.

Even so, the Musk / Trump efforts to overthrow the Constitution and destroy the federal government continued to creep across the land like a deadly virus.

We cannot relent. We cannot ease up. We cannot normalize or minimize what is happening by describing the unconstitutional efforts as “controversial,” “disruptive,” or “illegal.” Two men—one elected and one unelected—have arrogated to themselves the power to override Congress and ignore the Constitution. If that scenario took place in any other country in the world, we would call it a coup. Our reluctant legacy media continues to bow and scrape before Trump and Musk, hiding behind euphemisms and restraint in the face of a national emergency.

Three notable exceptions are Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Musk/Trump coup will not be televised and Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick in Slate, Elon Musk’s Power Grab Is Lawless, Dangerous, and—Yes—a Coup.

Will Bunch writes,

A hostile takeover of the government by folks who weren’t elected . . . is the classic definition of a coup.

Stern and Lithwick write,

An elected leader who illegally entrenches his own power, as Trump did four years ago, is engaged in a self-coup. . . . What do we call it when the president is too lazy to gut the government himself, giving away power to a zealous and unaccountable friend? Call it a double-self-coup . . . .

We are facing a constitutional crisis like no other in living memory. The first step is to recognize the threat for what it is: A coup designed to sunder the Constitution by installing the president as the unbounded ruler of America.

The Founders fought a revolutionary war to overthrow a monarch. Trump and Musk are seeking to undo the outcome of the American Revolution. That should alarm every American.

There is much to cover from Tuesday. I will endeavor to make sense of the many developments by grouping them into the following broad categories:

Protests

Lawsuits

Additional unconstitutional actions by Musk / Trump

Trump's comments on Gaza

Protests

Treasury Department

For the second day, protesters gathered outside the US Treasury Building in Washington D.C. The Tuesday event was coordinated by MoveOn and Indivisible. See MSN, Protesters Hold 'Nobody Elected Elon' Rally Outside Treasury Building.

Dozens of members of Congress showed up at the event—a sign that Democrats in Congress are paying attention to their constituents. A delegation of Democratic representatives and senators were denied entrance to the Treasury Building. See Axios, Congressional Democrats denied entry to Treasury Department

Dozens of readers sent photos of the protest. (Thanks to everyone who sent photos and video—I received hundreds!)

A smaller group of concerned citizens attempted to visit Senator Schuck Schumer’s office but were turned away. They then held an impromptu demonstration in front of his office building. See photos below.

An organic, national protest is planned for February 5 with the goal of holding protests in every state capitol building. See Newsweek, What Is the '50 States' Anti-Trump Protest Movement? What to Know About 50501. The short notice is a challenge. The planned protest times are included in the Newsweek article.

If you are within driving distance of your state capitol, please make an effort to show up! Protests must start somewhere, so don’t fret if the initial demonstrations are small(ish). The point is that people are finding their voices, which is good!

The National Women’s March is organizing a weekly Moment of Silence at 12:53 pm to mark the time when January 6 insurrectionists broke through the barricades at the US Capitol. See Not the Bee, Women's March announces "weekly minute of silence" on Wednesdays at 12:53, "the moment January 6th rioters first crossed the barricades".

If you would like to promote other protests, please post the details in the Comment section or “reply” to this email with the details. Change the subject line to “Protest Details.”

Lawsuits

FBI lawsuits.

Legal advocacy groups continued to file suits against the Trump administration, seeking to obtain injunctions against illegal executive orders.

Two suits on behalf of FBI agents were filed on Tuesday. NBC News, FBI agents sue Justice Department, alleging 'retribution' over their work on Jan. 6 cases.

Per NBC, in one suit, nine FBI agents argue that the specific purpose of an internal FBI survey "is to identify agents and other FBI personnel to be terminated as a form of politically motivated retribution.”

The suit seeks to represent a class of 6,000 current and former FBI agents who are on the list that has been provided by the FBI to the DOJ identifying those agents.

Per NBC, the second suit requests

“protection” from the Justice Department’s “anticipated retaliatory decision to expose their personal information for opprobrium and potential vigilante action by those who they were investigating.”

Federal employees sue over alleged “buyout offer.”

See The Hill, Union sues over Trump buyout offer. (“The largest federal government employee union is suing the Trump administration to block its buyouts for workers, calling the offer “an arbitrary, unlawful, short-fused ultimatum which workers may not be able to enforce.”)

Order prohibiting the transfer of transgender inmates to men’s prison

A federal judge issued an order enjoining the transfer of three transgender inmates from women’s prison facilities to men’s prisons. See CNN, Judge blocks federal prison system from moving three transgender women to men’s prisons

Additional unconstitutional acts

The coup by Trump and Musk continued at full steam despite court orders and assurances by administration officials claiming that “There is nothing to see here, move along.”

Musk’s hacking into Treasury payments system.

Secretary of Treasury Bessent told lawmakers in a private meeting that Musk has not gained access to payments by the Treasury—despite Musk’s boasts to the contrary on Twitter. As Josh Marshall explains, there is strong reason to doubt Bessent’s denials. See Talking Points Memo, Musk Cronies Dive Into Treasury Dept Payments Code Base.

Marshall writes,

I’m told that . . . DOGE operatives received full admin-level access on Friday, January 31st. The claim of “read only” access was either false from the start or later fell through. The DOGE team . . . . has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.

If you can’t trust assurances from the Secretary of the Treasury, who can you trust? Not Secretary of State Rubio! Read on!

USAID effectively shut down

Despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claim that the Trump administration plans to reorganize USAID, Trump has effectively shuttered the agency by placing nearly every employee on administrative leave. See NBC News, USAID announces nearly all direct hires will be placed on administrative leave.

Trump cannot legally terminate the USAID as an agency or impound funds appropriated by Congress to USAID programs. He is attempting to circumvent those legal and constitutional prohibitions by effectively firing the entire workforce.

Consumer Finance Protection Board ordered to cease work

The CFPB is a congressionally created agency that cannot be terminated by Trump. So, Trump appointed Treasury Secretary Bessent as the new CFPB head, who immediately ordered the CFPB to cease work. See NPR, New CFPB head, Scott Bessent, orders staff to halt work.

Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary, is a hedge fund manager who is no friend to consumers. Not surprisingly, major banks cheered Bessent’s appointment to the consumer protection bureau and urged the immediate repeal of pesky regulations that protect the banking industry’s customers from unscrupulous practices. (See NPR article, above.)

Trump moves to shut down Department of Education

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order that appears to pave the way to shutter the Department of Education. Although the executive order recognizes that Trump cannot eliminate an agency created by Congress, he will likely use the same tactic deployed against USAID and the CFPB—order the workforce to take administrative leave, thereby suspending all work. See Newsweek, Trump Moves To Dismantle Department of Education With New Order.

Again, Trump has no authority to prevent the disbursement of funds allocated by Congress to assist local educational programs and students with disabilities. If Trump places the DOE into suspended animation, millions of families with disabled children will be thrown into ruinous financial hardship and chaos.

Trump targets the CIA.

Trump has sent a “buyout” offer to the entire CIA workforce. See CNN, CIA sends ‘buyout’ offers to entire workforce.

To state the obvious, a mass departure from the CIA would inflict grievous harm on US national security. Other deferred resignation letters have suggested that mass layoffs are imminent. If the same applies to the CIA, Putin must be popping Champagne in the Kremlin.

Trump moves to reclassify chief technology officers in agencies

Until now, the chief information officers in charge of technology at federal agencies have been civil service employees who are selected on technical merit, not political persuasion.

Trump will change that rule on February 14. After that date, chief information officers will be political appointees because, you know, what really matters in creating a stable computer network is where your political loyalties lie, not what education, experience, and skills you possess. See NBC News, Trump admin moves to make tech officials appointees amid DOGE clashes

Trump's comments regarding Gaza

During a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump made comments regarding Gaza that were simultaneously bizarre, offensive, and destabilizing. Trump suggested that:

Two million Palestinians in Gaza should be forced to emigrate to Arab countries (Trump said, “I don’t think they are going to tell me no.”)

The US would take control of Gaza

The US would develop Gaza as “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

The context and details of Trump's remarks are here: NYTimes, Trump Proposes U.S. Takeover of Gaza and Says All Palestinians Should Leave. (Accessible to all.)

Saudi Arabia and representatives of Palestinians in Gaza issued statements condemning the proposals. As noted in the NYTimes article, Trump's proposals may imperil the second stage of hostage releases in the current cease fire. Trump's recklessness may have condemned the remaining hostages to additional time in captivity.

Concluding Thoughts

Okay, that was a lot to digest. But keep this in mind: Not everything that Trump and Musk have announced will actually occur or will be easy to implement. And we will have time to resist, fight back, slow walk, and seek injunctive relief from the courts. We can blunt some of the damage but cannot prevent it all. Still, we must do our best to protect as many people and programs as possible.

Despite the challenging outlook, we must push back forcefully. Trump and Musk have overreached; the damage will soon appear on national news and local newspapers. Tales of hardship and unfairness will be shared in church basements and grocery stores. The damage will be felt on farms and in small businesses, at colleges and primary schools, in hospitals and police stations.

Sadly and inevitably, Trump's mass firings and politicization of the federal government's information technology infrastructure will lead to technical disasters. Per the Talking Points Memo, above, Musk’s engineers are placing “backdoors” into federal agency computer systems, weakening their defenses against cyber-attacks from foreign adversaries.

All of this will backfire sooner or later. Just like Trump's ridiculous comments about Gaza. His ignorance and impulsiveness will be his undoing—and that of the GOP. It will be painful for us, so we must be prepared. There is a reason that Democrats are holding town hall meetings with constituents, but Republicans are not. Republicans fear the growing public concern about Trump's slash-and-burn approach that will hurt millions of Americans without regard to political party.

We must be tough, steeling ourselves for rough times ahead. But we must also be proactive in planning to leverage Trump's mistakes to our advantage.

Don’t give up. Don’t look away. Endure. Abide. Keep the faith. If we can do that, we will prevail. It is only a matter for time.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #Robert B. Hubbell #illegal coup #coup coup #US Treasury #Musk #TFG #Gaza #CIA #Dept. of Education #Dept. of Energy #USAID #State Dept

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good-old-gossip · 25 days ago

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President Donald Trump's plan for the US to "take over" and take “ownership” of Palestine’s Gaza, removing its native Palestinians population to create the "Riviera of the Middle East," has drawn stark criticism globally as an overt attempt to forcibly displace the enclave’s indigenous Palestinian inhabitants.

Announcing his transformation prospects at the White House alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Trump said that, “The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it … level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area."

"I think the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable," he added.

Western media giants framed Trump’s Gaza takeover proposal as an “innovative” and “courageous” business opportunity, portraying the plan in a positive light, with many headlines omitting any mention of the Palestinian territory’s residents or the consequences for the two million Palestinians displaced inside the besieged enclave – namely, further displacement and eventual erasure.

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sailing-ever-west · 26 days ago

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article

Article Text bc NYT sucks:

Trump Proposes U.S. Takeover of Gaza and Says All Palestinians Should Leave

By Michael D. ShearPeter Baker and Isabel Kershner

Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear reported from Washington, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.

Published Feb. 4, 2025

Updated Feb. 5, 2025, 5:47 a.m. ET

The president met with the Israeli prime minister at the White House, meeting in person with another world leader for the first time since returning to power.

President Trump declared on Tuesday that the United States should seize control of Gaza and permanently displace the entire Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave, one of the most brazen ideas that any American leader has advanced in years.

Hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House, Mr. Trump said that all two million Palestinians from Gaza should be moved to countries like Egypt and Jordan because of the devastation wrought by Israel’s campaign against Hamas after the terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023.

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference Tuesday evening. “We’ll own it and be responsible” for disposing of unexploded munitions and rebuilding Gaza into a mecca for jobs and tourism. Sounding like the real estate developer he once was, Mr. Trump vowed to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

While the president framed the matter as a humanitarian imperative and an economic development opportunity, he effectively reopened a geopolitical Pandora’s box with far-reaching implications for the Middle East. Control over Gaza has been one of the major flash points of the Arab-Israeli conflict for decades, and the idea of relocating its Palestinian residents recalls an era when great Western powers redrew the maps of the region and moved around populations without regard to local autonomy.

The notion of the United States taking over territory in the Middle East would be a dramatic reversal for Mr. Trump, who first ran for office in 2016 vowing to extract America from the region after the Iraq war and decried the nation-building of his predecessors. In unveiling the plan, Mr. Trump did not cite any legal authority giving him the right to take over the territory, nor did he address the fact that forcible removal of a population violates international law and decades of American foreign policy consensus in both parties.

He made the proposal even as the United States was seeking to secure the Israel-Hamas cease-fire’s second phase, which is designed to free the remaining hostages in Gaza and bring a permanent end to the fighting. Negotiators had described their task as exceptionally difficult even before Mr. Trump announced his idea of ousting Palestinians from their homes.

Hamas, which has ruled in Gaza for most of the past two decades and is re-establishing control there now, immediately rejected mass relocation on Tuesday, and Egypt and Jordan have rejected the idea of taking in a large influx of Palestinians, given the fraught history, burden and destabilizing potential.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, said that Mr. Trump’s proposed relocation was “a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region.”

“Our people in Gaza will not allow for these plans to come to pass,” he said in a statement distributed by Hamas. “What is needed is the end of the occupation and the aggression against our people, not expelling them from their land.”

Mr. Trump waved aside the opposition from Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan, suggesting that his powers of persuasion would convince them.

“They say they’re not going to accept,” Mr. Trump said during an earlier meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in the Oval Office. “I say they will.”

Mr. Netanyahu, sitting at Mr. Trump’s side, smiled with satisfaction as the president first outlined his ideas. Later, during the joint news conference, the Israeli prime minister heaped praise on Mr. Trump.

“You cut to the chase,” Mr. Netanyahu told Mr. Trump. “You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say, and after the jaws dropped, people scratch their heads and they say, ‘you know, he’s right.’”

“This is the kind of thinking that will reshape the Middle East and bring peace,” he added.

In his remarks, Mr. Trump insisted that Palestinians would quickly warm to his idea.

“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Mr. Trump said. “I heard that Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They live like hell. They live like they’re living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative.”

He suggested that nations in the region could finance the resettlement of Gazans to new places — perhaps “a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” — that would provide better living conditions, either as a single territory or as many as a dozen. “It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return,” he said without offering details of what that would entail.

Asked how many Palestinians he had in mind, he said, “all of them,” adding, “I would think that they would be thrilled.” Pressed repeatedly on whether he would force them to go even if they did not want to, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think they’re going to tell me no.”

Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Trump in the Oval Office near a fireplace with several boom microphones over their heads.

Mr. Trump’s hosting of Mr. Netanyahu was his first in-person meeting with another world leader since his return to power two weeks ago.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

Gaza has a long and tortured history of conflict and crisis. Many Gazans are descendants of Palestinians who were forced out of their homes during the 1948 war after Israel’s independence, an event known around the Arab world as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Now Mr. Trump is suggesting that they be displaced again, even though the Geneva Conventions — international agreements that the United States and Israel both ratified — bar forcible relocation of populations.

Egypt captured Gaza during the 1948 war and controlled it until Israel seized it, along with other Palestinian territory, in a 1967 war against a coalition of Arab nations seeking to destroy the Jewish state. Palestinians in Gaza waged violent resistance for years afterward, and Israel eventually withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

But within two years, Hamas, an avowed enemy of Israel that the United States and other nations have designated a terrorist group, took control of the enclave and used it as a base for war against Israel.

For years, Israel blockaded Gaza while Hamas fired rockets and staged terrorist attacks, culminating in the October 2023 operation that killed 1,200 people and led to the capture of 250 more. Israel retaliated with an unrelenting military operation that killed more than 47,000 people, according to Gazan health officials, whose count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

In the weeks since a cease-fire that President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration negotiated and that Mr. Trump pushed came into effect, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were repeatedly displaced throughout the war have returned to their homes in Gaza to find them and their communities demolished. Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, visited Gaza last week and said it would take 10 to 15 years to reconstruct.

“If you had damage that was one-hundredth of what I saw in Gaza, nobody would be allowed to go back to their homes,” Mr. Witkoff told reporters on Tuesday. “That’s how dangerous it is. There’s 30,000 unexploded munitions. It is buildings that could tip over at any moment. There’s no utilities.”

Picking up on the theme later in the day, Mr. Trump said it was not realistic to have Palestinians return to Gaza. “They have no alternative right now” but to leave, Mr. Trump told reporters before Mr. Netanyahu’s arrival.

“I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative,” he said. “What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.” He added: “I don’t know how they could want to stay. It’s a demolition site. It’s a pure demolition site.”

Mr. Trump suggested the resettlement of Palestinians would be akin to the New York real estate projects he built his career on. “If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places with plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” he said. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza.”

“I do see a long-term ownership position” for the United States, Mr. Trump said, adding that “everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent.”

Mr. Trump’s summit with Mr. Netanyahu was his first in-person meeting with another world leader since his return to power two weeks ago. It was part of a multiday visit to Washington by Mr. Netanyahu that was meant to demonstrate the close ties between the two leaders.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu forged a close partnership during the president’s first term but fell out toward its end over a number of issues, including the Israeli leader’s willingness to congratulate Mr. Biden on his victory in the 2020 election, which Mr. Trump insists he won. Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu have since sought to smooth over their rift.

But Mr. Netanyahu went into his meeting at odds with Mr. Trump on several important issues, according to analysts, likely including how to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions and how quickly to end the war in Gaza.

The Trump administration has made clear that it wants to see all of the hostages held by Hamas returned and then move on to a grand bargain involving Saudi Arabia that formalizes relations with Israel.

Saudi Arabia reiterated support for an independent Palestinian state on Tuesday and said forging ties with Israel would depend on the creation of such a state.

Advisers to Mr. Trump told reporters on Tuesday morning that the president and Mr. Netanyahu were united behind the idea that Hamas should not be allowed to remain in power.

With Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government in jeopardy if the war ends with Hamas still in control in Gaza, and with no other plan for the area in place, analysts expect the Israeli prime minister to try to delay moving toward a permanent cease-fire.

“Netanyahu made this salami deal,” said Shira Efron, the senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group, referring to the three-phased agreement with Hamas. “He’s always playing for time and kicking the can down the road.”

Adding to the anxiety in the region were reports on Monday that U.S. intelligence officials believe Iran is seeking to build a cruder atomic weapon that could be developed quickly if the leadership in Tehran decided to do so.

It remains unclear whether that decision has been made, and Iran’s new president has indicated that he would like to begin a negotiation with Mr. Trump’s administration even as the country’s nuclear scientists push ahead with their efforts.

Mr. Trump on Tuesday signed an order directing a return to the policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran through sanctions, but avoided hostile language and refused to say whether he would support an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, an indication of his interest in reaching an agreement. “This is one I’m torn about,” he said as he signed the order. “Hopefully, we’re not going to have to use it very much.”

#gaza genocide #palestine #free palestine #free gaza #gaza #us politics #world politics #trump administration #donald trump #benjamin netanyahu

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sawbeentheblog · 5 days ago

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'Trump Gaza' Controversy: AI-Generated Video Of Dancing Musk, Sunbathing Netanyahu Sparks Outrage

KEY POINTS The video depicted a smiling Musk eating local food and partying with people It also showed a massive golden statue of Trump and mini Trump statues, as well as a “Trump Gaza” hotel It depicted Trump and Netanyahu enjoying cool drinks by a pool in between two modern hotels President Donald Trump was under fire after he posted an AI-generated video depicting what was labeled “Trump…

#Donald Trump Gaza #Donald Trump Gaza plan #Donald Trump Gaza takeover #Gaza strip #Trump Gaza #US Gaza takeover

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radfanwinner · 26 days ago

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Trump’s Gaza takeover plan “tantamount to ethnic cleansing,” medical charity says

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primepaginequotidiani · 26 days ago

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PRIMA PAGINA New York Times di Oggi mercoledì, 05 febbraio 2025

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 26 days ago

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Brazil's Lula rejects Trump plan for Gaza and tariff threats as 'bravado'

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday rejected U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal to take over the Gaza Strip, and dismissed his expansionist ambitions and tariff threats against trading partners as "bravado".

"No country, no matter how important, can fight the entire world all the time," the Brazilian leader said in an interview with local radio stations when asked about Trump.

Trump on Tuesday proposed a U.S. takeover of Gaza to create a "Riviera of the Middle East" after resettling Palestinians elsewhere, sparking criticism from international powers.

"It makes no sense ... Where would Palestinians live? This is something incomprehensible to any human being," Lula said, defending a two-state solution and repeating earlier denunciations of Israel's military action in Gaza as "genocide".

#brazil #politics #united states #palestine #israel #luiz inacio lula da silva #economy #brazilian politics #international politics #image description in alt #mod nise da silveira

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justforbooks · 24 days ago

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People will face terror and starve, many will die

The decimation of USAid is already having a terrible effect in some of the poorest places on the planet. It damages America: it will harm us all

An earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or above could not have caused more carnage. Recent floods in Asia and droughts in Africa have been catastrophic, yet they have inflicted less damage and affected fewer people than the sudden withdrawal of billions of dollars of US aid from the world’s most volatile hotspots and its most vulnerable people. Coming alongside President Trump’s plan for a US takeover of Gaza, the US administration’s resolve to shut down its international aid agency sends a clear message that the era when American leaders valued their soft power is coming to an end.

But while the Gaza plan is as yet only on the drawing board, USAid cuts – which will see funding slashed and just 290 of the more than 10,000 employees worldwide retained, according to the New York Times - have already begun to bite this week. We have seen the halting of landmine-clearing work in Asia, support for war veterans and independent media in Ukraine, and assistance for Rohingya refugees on the border of Bangladesh. This week, drug deliveries to fight the current mpox and Ebola outbreaks in Africa have been stopped, life-saving food lies rotting at African ports, and even initiatives targeting trafficking of drugs like fentanyl have been cut back. One of the world’s most respected charities, Brac, says that the 90-day blanket ban on helping vulnerable people is depriving 3.5 million people of vital services.

One critical programme has been granted a limited waiver. Pepfar, created by Republican president George W Bush, offers antiretroviral prescriptions to 20 million people around the world to combat HIV and Aids. Its activities escaped the ban only after warnings that a 90-day stoppage could lead to 136,000 babies acquiring HIV. But it has still been blocked from organising cervical cancer screening, treating malaria, tuberculosis and polio, assisting maternal and child health, and efforts to curtail outbreaks of Ebola, Marburg and mpox.

Not only does the stop-work edict mean that, in a matter of days, the US has destroyed the work of decades building up goodwill around the world, but Trump’s claim that America has been over-generous is exposed as yet another exaggeration. Norway tops the list as biggest donor of official development assistance (ODA) as a percentage of gross national income (GNI) at 1.09%; Britain is at just over 0.5%, albeit down from the UN target of 0.7%; but the US is near the bottom of the advanced economies at 0.24% – alongside Slovenia and the Czech Republic. It is simply the size of the US economy – 26% of world output – that means that the 0.24% adds up to more aid than any other country. The US provided $66bn in 2023, making USAid a leader in global humanitarian aid, education and health, not least in addressing HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.

On Sunday night, Trump told reporters that USAid had been “run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out”. “I don’t want my dollars going towards this crap,” his press spokesperson added, with one of the president’s chief advisers Elon Musk calling the agency a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America”. “You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair,” he said. “We’re shutting it down.”

Indeed, in a post on X last weekend, Musk shared a screenshot quoting the false claim that “less than 10 percent of our foreign assistance dollars flowing through USAID is actually reaching those communities”. The implication is that the remaining 90% was diverted, stolen, or just wasted. In fact, the 10% figure is the proportion of the budget going directly to NGOs and organisations in the developing world. The remaining 90% is not wasted – instead, it comprises all the goods and services that USAid, American companies and NGOs, and multilateral organisations deliver in kind, from HIV drugs to emergency food aid, malaria bed nets, and treatment for malnutrition. It is simply untrue that 90% of aid falls into the wrong hands and never reaches the most vulnerable.

In fact, the initial blanket executive order proved to be such a blunt instrument – the only initial exemptions were for emergency food aid and for military funding for Israel and Egypt – that it had to be modified to include exceptions for what the government called “life-saving humanitarian assistance”, although it stopped short of defining them. “We are rooting out waste. We are blocking woke programs. And we are exposing activities that run contrary to our national interests. None of this would be possible if these programs remained on autopilot,” said a statement released by the state department. The new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, now wants his department to control the whole budget and close down USAid entirely. “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?” Rubio asked in a statement that suggested that the America which generally worked multilaterally in a unipolar era is now determined to act unilaterally in a multipolar one.

This new stance is not just “America first” but “America first and only” – and a gift to Hamas, IS, the Houthi rebels, and all who wish to show that coexistence with the US is impossible. The shutdown is also good news for China, whose own global development initiative will be strengthened as it positions itself to replace America. Desperate people will turn to extremists who will say that the US can never again be trusted. And by causing misery and by alienating actual and possible allies, far from making America great again, the cancellation of aid will only make America weaker.

The tragedy for the planet is that US aid cuts come on top of diminishing aid budgets among the world’s richest economies, from Germany to the UK. International aid agencies are now so underfunded that in 2024, for the second consecutive year, the UN covered less than half of its humanitarian funding goal of nearly $50bn – at a time when increasing conflicts and natural disasters necessitate more relief donor grants than ever. Yes, we can discuss how greater reciprocity can create a fairer system of burden sharing – but further cuts in aid threaten more avoidable deaths, and a poorer world will ultimately make the US poorer too.

US generosity is often seen as mere charity, but it is in the country’s self-interest to be generous because the creation of a more stable world benefits us all. We all gain if USAid can mitigate the spread of infectious diseases, prevent malnutrition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan, halt the upsurge of IS in Syria and support a fair, humanitarian reconstruction of Gaza and Ukraine. Only the narrowest and most blinkered view of what constitutes “America first” can justify the disaster America has unloaded on the world.

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#just for books #USAid #Opinion #message from the editor

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