The US-Israel Culture of Annihilation
April 6, 2026
“I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate.”
– Theodore Roosevelt, 1911
“I’m not looking for war, and if there is, it’ll be obliteration like you’ve never seen before.”
– Donald Trump, 2019
In close coordination with the Israeli regime, Donald Trump has embraced Roosevelt’s style of gunboat diplomacy without prior congressional authorization or a declaration of war but with far more violence and destruction. This is a man who came to politics not only undisciplined by the formalities and limitations of the presidential office or the Constitution but with the level of narcissism and egotism of a dangerous sociopath holding massive WMD. This is the lowest point in US political history.
Trump chose people for conducting foreign affairs with no training in international relations or diplomacy, only personal loyalty. Britain’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, said that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, on whom Trump primarily relied in deciding whether to go to war in Iran, are simply “Israeli assets.”
Both Kushner and Witkoff are ardent Zionists and, like Trump, have used Middle East negotiations to conduct multibillion dollar personal business transactions in the region, illegally and unashamedly violating Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution, the emoluments clause. They have played key roles in false flag operations to try to deceive the Iranian leadership into believing the US was serious about negotiating an agreement to foreclose Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.
The Israeli government doesn’t even pretend to negotiate. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has said that Israelis as a whole think of militarism as the first, not the last, option in dealing with adversaries. Their model for dealing with Muslim or Arab nations, all potential Amalekites in Netanyahu’s view, is the Gaza final solution.
It is confirmed by abundant human rights reports and physical evidence that Israel, using the Gaza playbook, is targeting and destroying residences, hospitals, clinics, schools, sports stadiums, businesses, cafes, civilian infrastructure, as well as assassinating Iran’s top leaders and negotiators. Their objective is plainly not to negotiate but to wipe out Iran as a nation state and as a people as part of its hegemonic project in the region, as it has done in Syria and is attempting to do in Lebanon.
The US-Israeli assault on Iran calls to mind the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, when the Nazi troops were sent to the front to burn down villages, but with an underestimation of their enemy and without adequate resources to win a war of such magnitude. Iran may not be Russia, but neither is it Iraq or Libya or Venezuela. Trump and Netanyahu have completely failed in their primary mission – to destroy the Iranian state. Instead, they have played Armageddon with the world economy.
And to their own shock and awe and despite the self-censorship of the US mainstream media (MSM), Israel and the American military bases in the Middle East have been pummeled by the seemingly endless stock of accurate Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, along with, most probably Russian-assisted, precision guidance systems. For the Russians, their assistance is in part retaliation for US military communications intelligence, weapons, targeting, and logistics given to the Ukrainian military to launch missile attacks on Russia.
In the current situation, Trump’s and Netanyahu’s combined air force power has blitzed its way into Iranian cities, yet is unable to force a surrender. And while Iran has already suffered enormous civilian casualties, it has in effect rope-a-doped the two imperial states into depleting their arsenal and rendered both unable to prevent a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump has cornered himself into acting like Netanyahu’s puppet, the next (il)logical step being the possible commitment of ground forces into the country, which will result in significant American casualties (the Israelis long having used the US troops as their mercenaries). Such a step will further burden American taxpayers with massive increases in non-productive public spending. Déjà vu all over again.
The US war effort appears to be without any coherent strategy, Trump’s pronouncements on this question changing by the day. Instead, what we see throughout the Middle East is the Israeli tail wagging the American dog. Many have speculated about the grip that Netanyahu and Mossad appear to have over Trump and the possibility that Israeli intelligence apparatuses have compromising evidence of the US president in the Epstein files.
If Trump is serious about regime change, he has seriously blundered himself into a trap for which there is no available escape route except either an extraordinary admission of US failure, even if couched as victory, or nuclear annihilation.
It is hard in fact to fathom Trump and his band of warmongering miscreants actually having a credible long-range strategy, presumably toward China. He has every reason to walk away having secured a $2 billion investment offered by the Saudis in Jared Kushner’s private equity firm.
If there is a long-term policy, and it’s unlikely that Trump or his appointees think in those terms, it has to do with the looming threat that Iran may conduct future oil trade outside of the dollar-based reserve currency system and encourage other Gulf states to do the same. As the Saudis and other oil-rich regimes prop up the American economy and its deficit spending through massive purchases of stocks, bonds, Treasury notes, weapon systems, and real estate, the shift away from petrodollars would likely be devastating.
At the same time, Trump, no less than past Democrat presidents, is beholden to billionaire Zionists like Miriam Adelson, who allegedly offered him $250 million to fund his third term in office. Zionists dominate the pool of largest individual donors to both parties. The Israel lobby group AIPAC openly boasts of its successful purchase of American politicians. And the MSM, including the Times and Post, are heavily tilted toward the Israeli perspective vis-à-vis the Palestinians and other resistance movements in the Middle East, subserviently denigrating them as “terrorists.”
Then there’s the influence of the US defense sector. In 2025, military sales to Saudi Arabia alone among the Gulf states was $142 billion. However, if the US proves unable to defend the protective shield of bases in those oil sheikdoms, those regimes may have greater reason to seek peace with Iran and move closer to Iranian allies China and Russia. This could mean cancellation of the US bases agreements on their soil and the ending of arms purchases from the American military-industrial complex.
Given its experience with the perfidious and ruthless US-Israeli assault on their country, Iran is unlikely to accept anything less than the elimination of further military and economic threats to their country. This could necessitate the development of nuclear weapons as deterrence.
It is important to recall US interference in Iran going back to the 1953 CIA coup, which ousted a democratically elected government and installed a ruthless dictator, Shah Pahlavi, whose rule ended with the Islamic revolution of 1979. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats appear to understand this or otherwise have the moral outlook to recognize that far from being a threat to the West Asian region, Iran has suffered continuous abuse and intervention from the Anglo-American alliance, which includes Israel.
Fortunately, large majorities of Americans oppose the war, while Trump’s approval ratings are among the worst ever for a US president. However, given Trump’s apparent state of detachment to the human suffering in Iran, encouraged by the even more cold-blooded genocidal attitudes of his Mossad partners, there’s no telling what may be further in store, including the possibility of an escalation to nuclear attacks. For Israel, there is no such thing as a win-win diplomatic solution.
In the near term, one can only hope that the regime change the US and Israel seek to impose on Iran will soon happen in their own countries.
Gerald Sussman is professor emeritus of urban studies and international studies at Portland State University. He is the author or editor of seven books, including the most recent (2025), British and American Electoral Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism: Parallel Trajectories (Routledge). This article is an abbreviated version of a forthcoming article in the journal New Political Science. Professor Sussman can be reached at: sussmag@pdx.edu
America’s Israel: The Moral Cost of Complicity
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
The foisting of a Jewish state in the heart of Palestine was an arrogant imperial decision that has left a trail of carnage in West Asia; most recently, the genocide in Gaza. How much bloodletting will satiate Israel and its American enabler?
In his lawless rabid tirade of 1 April, President Donald Trump threatened even more savagery and crimes against humanity. He made it clear that the U.S. is not a bystander but a direct accomplice in Israeli atrocities and war crimes.
What was absent from Trump’s speech was any mention that a courageous insider came forward on 17 March 2026 to tell the truth. Joseph Kent, a veteran with 11combat deployments, and former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, was that person. In his resignation letter to Trump, he poignantly wrote:
“Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that you should strike now, there was a clear path to swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.”
It should be noted that previous U.S. presidents have faced comparable pressures and made similar mistakes since the “American father of Israel,” President Harry S. Truman, gave his blessing to the European Zionists’ illegal claim to Palestine in May 1948. For the first time, on that date, Israel appeared on the world map.
The consequences of Israel’s century-long project to reshape West Asia in its image have been tragic. Genocide in occupied Gaza and the West Bank, wars on Lebanon and Iran are its current bids to disfigure the region, to gain dominance no matter the cost.
Iran has, since 1979, challenged Israel’s expansionist project to control territory “between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River,” which is written into the 1977 election manifesto and electoral platform of the Likud Party; the dominant party for 49 years.
The U.S.-Israel war, “Operation Epic Fury,” is being fought to degrade Iran as a West Asian power. The war has unveiled to the world Tel Aviv’s dependence on Washington to secure regional hegemony, as well as its outsized influence over American politicians and policymakers.
In retrospect, it is alarming to realize that, over these many years, we have learned very little from our history with Israel.
Much like Joe Kent, who cited the war’s casus belli as undue “pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” most U.S. presidents have experienced similar impositions. None more so than President Truman.
After the Second World War, influential American Zionists were merciless in their efforts to persuade Truman to commit American prestige and power on behalf of Zionist aspirations, even though they most often compromised U.S. interests.
Jewish immigration to Palestine was a pivotal issue for the Truman administration in 1947 due to the intensifying immigration crisis and mounting pressure for the United States to support the Zionist goal of a Jewish state. Also, Britain announced in February of that year that it would end its mandate of Palestine and refer its future to the newly created United Nations.
Approximately 250,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors were among the nearly 6 million displaced persons (DP) languishing in Allied administered refugee camps across Europe in 1947.
In that year, American Zionists fiercely lobbied Truman to pressure the British government to allow 100,000 more Jewish refugees into Palestine, where their numbers had been swelling since the 1930s.
During the waning years of its mandate, Britain struggled to manage the mounting violence between Zionist colonizers and Palestinian resistance forces and maintain stable relations with the Arab states who opposed further Zionist expansion.
Truman was sympathetic to the Jewish plight and Zionist cause. He was, however, annoyed that Americans were violating international law, financing illegal immigration, and complicating sensitive U.S.-British diplomatic relations.
One particular event, the July 1947 Exodus voyage—the “ship that launched a nation” —has had historical consequences for West Asia.
The Exodus, illegally carrying 4,515 Holocaust survivors to Palestine was forcibly intercepted by the British navy. The widely publicized forcible return of the refugees to DP camps in British-occupied Germany sparked worldwide outrage and sympathy for the Zionist cause.
Intensified international and domestic pressure and sympathy for the plight of Jewish refugees influenced a number of events:
+ sped up Truman’s support for Jewish immigration;
+ increased American support for a Jewish homeland;
+ made it difficult for Britain to maintain restrictions on Jewish immigration;
+ forced it to abandon its mandate of Palestine in November 1947;
+ led to pressure in the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to pass a resolution partitioning Palestine into separate independent Jewish and Arab states.
There were compelling reasons for Truman to have concerns and misgivings about the high-profile Exodus event.
For one, the Exodus voyage was organized by Mosad Le’Aliya Bet, an agency that had been smuggling Jews illegally into Palestine for years. The ship was purchased and operated by the Haganah, an underground Jewish paramilitary operating, often violently, to drive the British from Palestine. In addition, they had established branches in European DP camps, where they trained thousands of Holocaust survivors to fight for a Jewish state once they reached Palestine.
According to the American Council for Judaism, founded in 1942, the voyage of the Exodus was “pure political theater and guerrilla warfare designed to sabotage President Truman’s declared call for restraint by all sides in the growing conflict in Palestine….; and that, “The Exodus was a former Chesapeake Bay Ferry purchased by American Zionists associated with Henry Morgenthau, to smuggle illegal arms into Palestinian Jewish communities. Its full name in 1947 was Haganah Ship Exodus 47, and its 4,500 passengers were mainly able-bodied military-aged young men and women, who were both disciplined and dedicated to conquer Palestine.”
The massive ship seemed calculated to provoke a crisis, as it had been overhauled for direct confrontation with the British.
The significance of the Exodus episode cannot be understated. It was quickly transformed into the “heroic mythology” of the newly created state. The David v. Goliath myth, dramatized in a 1958 novel and award-winning movie of the same name, cemented American public support.
Like numerous other refugee ships, the Exodus was financed by wealthy Jewish American donors, among them, key fundraiser, Henry Morgenthau Jr., former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury (1934-45).
Truman also clashed with Morgenthau over his intrusion into U.S. post-war policy toward Germany, particularly over what came to be known as the “Morgenthau Plan.”
Morgenthau’s 1944 “Suggested Post-Surrender Program for Germany,” was designed to permanently deindustrialize it; to remake the country into a primarily agricultural economy. His deindustrialization program, initially adopted by the U.S. and Allies, was abandoned once it became obvious it was obstructing European economic revival.
The U.S.-Israel strategy in its war against Iran to eliminate the country as a regional power by destroying its industrial infrastructure bears a striking resemblance to the old Morgenthau Plan to neutralize post-war Germany.
President Truman vented his frustrations on 21 July 1947 in three diary pages, discovered in 2003. He was especially angry over Morgenthau’s persistence that he force the British to allow the Exodus into Palestine; he wrote: “ The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgment on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed.” He continued: “The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Enians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I’ve found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.”
Since its launch and because of America’s unquestioned support, Israel has been allowed to act outside the “decencies of modern civilization.” It has with impunity broken all protocols of decency; and in the process, neutered the United Nations, its organizations and the international legal system.
The erosion of America’s international credibility was lost when the Oval Office became a revolving door for Israeli “agents of war” and its oil-rich Arab proxies.
Seventy-nine years separate the resignation letter of Joe Kent and the ruminations of President Truman. One thing, however, has not changed. When Israel and its lobby call it matters little who sits behind the Resolute Desk.
We speak with Sarit Michaeli from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem following the Knesset’s passage of a new law mandating death by hanging for Palestinians who are convicted of murdering Israelis. Jewish Israelis will not face the same punishment for similar crimes. The law, which further cements Israel’s apartheid system, has drawn condemnation from rights groups and other countries.
“This egregious, draconian law pretends to be somehow … grounded in some sort of objective criteria,” says Michaeli, B’Tselem’s international outreach director. “But essentially, it’s basically specifically written to apply only to Palestinians.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Israel is facing a global outcry after the Israeli Knesset approved a death penalty law designed to only apply to Palestinians. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned the country’s Supreme Court to strike down the law minutes after it passed, calling it “discriminatory by design.”
AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Tel Aviv, where we’re joined by Sarit Michaeli, international outreach director at the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
Explain what the Knesset just passed, Sarit.
SARIT MICHAELI: Thank you. It’s a privilege being with you, Amy and Nermeen.
So, the Israeli Knesset essentially passed — I’ll simplify — a law that applies only to Palestinians, both in Israel’s civil courts and in the Israeli military courts that are run in the West Bank. And essentially, it means that if Palestinians in these circumstances, in these instances, are found guilty of killing, of murder, with an opposition or an intention that is terroristic in nature, that is “opposed,” quote-unquote, to the state of Israel, then, essentially, there is a death penalty. There are some differences between the two systems, but the basic discriminatory nature, the basic fact that this will be only applied to Palestinians, is across the board, is the same across the board. This shocking, this egregious, draconian law pretends to be somehow based on any sort of — grounded in some sort of objective criteria. But essentially, it’s basically specifically written to apply only to Palestinians.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Sarit, so, it’s written to apply to Palestinians, though Palestinians aren’t specifically named in the law. But could you talk about the fact that Palestinians, unlike Israelis, are already tried in military courts, and what that means, effectively, in terms of their access to justice?
SARIT MICHAELI: Yes. So, of course, Palestinians who live in the occupied West Bank, under Israeli control, are tried by Israeli military courts, where Israel and Israeli soldiers are basically the prosecutors, the judges, and where Israel sets the law, and Israel decides what is right and wrong, what are offenses and what is legitimate. Palestinians do not take part in any sort of decisions that apply to these military courts. So, essentially, it’s basically like a military dictatorship that is a ruling over Palestinians.
And now with the change in Israel’s law, so the new amendment adopted by our parliament, this will mean that if Palestinians are convicted of murder under Israel’s terror laws, then there will be a default death penalty attached to them. There is also a possibility, under very extenuating and rare circumstances, that they will “only,” quote-unquote, face a life sentence, but the default will be a death penalty.
This will also be in a very difficult situation for any sort of a way to challenge it, because there is no real option for appeal. The execution, which will — has already been decided, will happen by hanging, will happen, in most circumstances, within 90 days. So, this, of course, does not leave a lot of room for correcting errors, offer any sort of attempt to try and get people off of death row. But then there is another system. So, this is when — so, Israeli occupation that applies in the West Bank will then basically condemn Palestinians to death for offenses that Israel decided are against Israeli security, terror offenses.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sarit, if I could just —
SARIT MICHAELI: But also, inside Israel is a Palestinian —
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Before we conclude — we have 30 seconds, Sarit. How are human rights groups going to challenge this legislation?
SARIT MICHAELI: So, I would just want to add one important thing, which is that this law actually enshrines, it makes formal, a situation where Israelis and Israel are killing Palestinians with impunity in huge numbers. I mean, for the past two years, in our genocide of Gaza, in our vast numbers — the vast numbers of Palestinians who were also killed in the West Bank, these things have happened with impunity. And the new law that will impose the death penalty is simply making this formalized.
However, I think there is also the issue of what this means in terms of Israel’s culture, Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians. I think this is an example, or this is proof, of how low our society has sunk.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarit Michaeli, we have to leave it there.
SARIT MICHAELI: Some Israeli human rights organizations have petitioned the —
AMY GOODMAN: I thank you so much for being with us, international outreach director at the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, speaking to us from Tel Aviv. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, for another edition of Democracy Now!
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