BEACH FRONT FOLLIES

Trump’s AI Gaza video elicits mockery from Middle East social media users

The US president’s video depicting a future Gaza under American authority was widely shared on Arabic and Hebrew social media, with many Palestinian users criticizing it.

Adam Lucente
Feb 26, 2025

Al-Monitor

Truth Social. Photo collage created by Al-Monitor on Feb. 26, 2025.

The Middle East has reacted with a mix of astonishment and rage to US President Donald Trump posting a video of Gaza made by artificial intelligence. The video follows Trump’s backtracking on his plan to “take over” the Palestinian enclave.

What happened: Trump posted the AI video on his social network, Truth Social, late Tuesday evening. The video starts with scenes of people walking through rubble and bombed-out buildings before the words “What’s next?” appear on the screen.

Children and a woman in a head covering are then shown walking through a tunnel toward pristine beaches. Some of the scenes that follow include billionaire and presidential adviser Elon Musk dancing as paper money falls from the sky, a hotel bearing the name Trump Gaza, and sports cars driving through a narrow street with a high-rise in the background and a gold statue of Trump nearby. The video even includes Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing by a swimming pool.


The dance music in the video features lyrics promoting Trump Gaza.

“Trump Gaza shining bright. Golden future, a brand-new light,” the song goes.

Trump expressed his desire for the United States to “take over” and develop the Gaza Strip earlier this month. He later doubled down on the plan, calling on Jordan and Egypt to take in Palestinians from the enclave. His remarks have been rejected by Palestinian leaders as well as the rulers of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.

Israel occupied Gaza after the 1967 war and withdrew its troops in 2005. The Palestinian militant group Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 and has since had several military confrontations with Israel. The October 2023 war has largely destroyed Gaza and left over 47,000 Palestinians killed, according to local authorities. The United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank estimated in a joint assessment last week that $53.2 billion would be needed for recovery and reconstruction over the next 10 years.

A ceasefire came into effect last month.

Reactions: The video was heavily criticized by Palestinians on social media. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the video “makes a mockery of all serious plans to change & transform Gaza.”


Palestinian American author Samar Jarrah described the video as "cultural and moral decadence."

Palestinian social media influencer Khaled Safi said in a post on X that the video "embodies the mentality of colonizers throughout history."

Trump was similarly slammed by some Arabic media professionals. Algerian presenter Ania El Afandi wrote "who told him it was for sale!" in reference to Trump's plans for Gaza.



London-based Egyptian journalist Osama Gaweesh said in a post on X that “Donald Trump has literally lost his mind," calling the images of money falling from the sky “despicable.”

Israel’s Channel 13 referred to the video as “odd.”

Know more: Trump indicated recently that he may be backing away from his Gaza proposal. He told Fox News on Friday that he was “surprised” by Jordan's and Egypt’s opposition given the large amount of US aid they receive, but he added that he would not “force” the plan.

"The way to do it is my plan. I think that’s the plan that really works. But I’m not forcing it. I’m just going to sit back and recommend it,” he told the outlet.

'Pure evil' — Trump, Musk, Netanyahu feature in grotesque AI Gaza clip

Donald Trump posts AI-generated video on his Truth Social network, showing him and his allies partying in reimagined Gaza, prompting many commentators to call it "racist", "anti-Christ" and ethnic cleansing "rebranded as real estate deal."



Others

Trump posts AI-generated video showing a giant golden statue of himself in "future" Gaza and a gift shop with little Trumps sitting on a throne.

Social media users have reacted with outrage and frustration after Donald Trump's official social media accounts posted an AI-generated video depicting Israel-ravaged Gaza rebuilt into a seaside resort, replete with a towering golden statue of the American president.

The video, which racked up millions of views on Instagram and was shared thousands of times on Trump's Truth Social network by Wednesday morning, prompted online backlash, with many commenters calling it "pure evil", "racist" and "ethnic cleansing."

The 33-second clip "Gaza 2025 What's Next?" opens with people on a rubble-strewn street emerging from a tunnel onto a beach with palm trees and yachts.

Trump has floated the idea of US occupation of Gaza under which its Palestinian population would be expelled and never allowed to return — a proposal that has triggered widespread criticism.

He later appeared to soften his plan, saying he was only recommending the idea, and conceded the leaders of Jordan and Egypt had rejected the proposal to move Palestinians against their will.

In the social media clip, the soundtrack includes the lyrics "Donald's coming to set you free, bringing the light for all to see" and "feast and dance, the deal is done, Trump Gaza number one."

Seemingly AI-generated renditions of shirtless Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sip cocktails in swimsuits by a pool, while other shots show what appears to be billionaire Elon Musk dancing under a shower of cash on the beach.

The video features bearded belly dancers and an image of US president hugging a scantily clad belly dancer.

Musk is shown tossing dollars and enjoying hummus by the beach.

One scene, however, closely resembles an AI-generated image of Trump and Netanyahu drinking cocktails that began circulating in early February.

A larger-than-life golden statue of Trump is also featured. The video also shows a gift shop with little Trumps sitting on a throne.

Biblical symbols were quickly picked by users in the video, with one user saying: "Mr President while I appreciate what you do, is not about you. To God be the glory and the honour, for without Him, you couldn't have accomplished anything. The statue is a symbol of the antichrist, please humble yourself to God."

'Mocks Gaza's humanitarian crisis'

The video "is grotesque — glorifying luxury on a war-torn land while ignoring the suffering of millions," X user Richard Angwin wrote.

"It's a shameless fantasy, not a solution, and mocks Gaza's humanitarian crisis. Disgraceful."

Howard Beckett, UK-based activist and trade unionist, lashed out at the video, calling it "truly racist fascism."

"It needs to be seen to be believed: Trump statues; Musk dancing; Trump & Netanyahu sun bathing & drinking cocktails. Monsters rejoicing in their genocide & ethnic cleansing."

X user Laura Dodsworth called the video as "a psychological warfare."

"A surreal vision of conquest, humiliation, and dominance, wrapped in gold and absurdity."

Another X user pointed at the Trump's crack down on border crossings and mass deportations of immigrants since taking office in January.

"The irony is Trump signed executive orders to stop what he immorally called 'invasion of illegals' yet he's showcasing the illegal invasion of a foreign land."

Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, lawyer and activist, described the video as "ethnic cleansing rebranded as a real estate deal."

"Colonialist White Supremacist Zionism. Pure Evil."



Genocide in Gaza

Nearly 16 months of Israel's genocidal war has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, wounded over 115,000, left much of Gaza in ruins and most of its population displaced.

Another 10,000 Palestinians have been abducted by Israel and dumped in Israeli jails and torture chambers. Experts and some studies say this is just a tip of an iceberg, and the actual Palestinian death toll could be around 200,000.


UN estimates put the cost of reconstruction at more than $53 billion.


A ceasefire — breached scores of times by Israel — in effect since January 19 has allowed an increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza, though Israel has been frequently blocking the entry of some essential supplies.


Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.


Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

SOURCE: TRTWorld and agencies

Trump shares AI-generated video of Gaza transformation, featuring golden statue and ‘Will Set You Free’ song

Amid controversy over his remarks about “taking over” the Gaza Strip, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday shared an AI-generated video portraying a transformed Gaza, reimagined as a lavish tourist destination.  

The video, titled ‘Trump’s Gaza’, showcases skyscrapers, children gazing at the sky as dollar bills rain down, and Elon Musk enjoying hummus on a Gaza beach. A boy holds a golden balloon resembling Trump’s face, while an enormous golden statue of Trump towers over the city, with people looking up at it. Trump is also depicted dancing in a nightclub, and a building prominently displays the name “Trump Gaza.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears seated on a deck chair beside Trump, sipping a beverage near a swimming pool with “Trump Gaza” in the background.  

A song playing in the video features lyrics that declare, “Donald Trump will set you free, bringing the life for all to see. No more tunnels, no more fear, Trump’s Gaza is finally here. Trump’s Gaza is shining bright, golden future, a brand new life. Feast and dance; the deed is done. Trump Gaza number one.”  

The video follows Trump’s earlier comments about the US taking control of Gaza and transforming it, remarks that have drawn widespread criticism.  

During a joint press conference with Netanyahu in the US, Trump stated that the ongoing ceasefire-hostage agreement between Israel and Hamas could mark the beginning of a broader and lasting peace. However, his vision faced strong opposition from international leaders, who condemned any notion of taking over Palestinian land.  

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed Trump’s idea as “ridiculous and absurd,” calling it a “recipe for chaos and tension in the region.” Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Secretary-General Hussein al-Sheikh reiterated the PLO’s firm opposition to any displacement of Palestinians, emphasizing that a two-state solution, in accordance with international law, remains the only path to peace.  

Palestinian UN representative Riyad Mansour stated that people in Gaza should be allowed to return to their original homes in Israel. Saudi Arabia reaffirmed its support for an independent Palestinian state and reiterated that it would not establish diplomatic ties with Israel until such a state is created, with East Jerusalem as its capital.  

(ANI)

Trump’s Plan for Gaza Would Make Colonial Plunder Great Again

In an interview, economist James K. Boyce discusses the relationship between war and economics, and how Trump’s talk of taking over Gaza and turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” is similar to the U.S. dispossession of Native Americans.


A protester in a prisoner's suit puts a Donald Trump mask on his face during a demonstration in front of the U.S. embassy in Madrid, protesting President Donald Trump's proposal that the United States would "take over" and "own" Gaza after the removal of Palestinians, claiming it could be transformed into "the Riviera of the Middle East."

(Photo: Luis Soto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

C.J. Polychroniou
Feb 27, 2025

Common Dreams

Can economics fuel conflict and war? Absolutely, and history is full of such examples. But economics can also pave the way to lasting peace, according to progressive economist James K. Boyce.

In the interview that follows, professor Boyce discusses the economics of war and the role that economics can play in peacemaking, including in places like Ukraine and Gaza, although he acknowledges that daunting challenges lie ahead for these two war-torn areas of the world. As for U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, Boyce puts it side by side with the disposition of Native Americans in the United States.

James K. Boyce is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a senior fellow of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). He is the author of Investing in Peace: Aid and Conditionality after Civil Warsand editor of Peace and the Public Purse: Economic Policies for Postwar Statebuildingand Economic Policy for Building Peace: The Lessons of El Salvador.He received the 2024 Global Inequality Research Award and the 2017 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. This interview is based on his seven-part video series released by the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

C. J. Polychroniou: Conflicts across the world have surged since 2020, making this one of the most violent periods since the end of the Cold War. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have been most visible in the news, but there have been dozens of other conflicts, too. What lessons can we draw from history about the economics of war, the topic of your recent video series from the Institute for New Economic Thinking? How about if we start with the wars of conquest during the era of colonialism?

James K. Boyce: Economics is not just about mutually beneficial exchanges entered into by mutually consenting adults, though you could be forgiven for thinking so if your only acquaintance with the subject was a typical textbook. Real-world economics also is about coercive relationships in which one side benefits and the other loses. Such interactions—which can be grouped under the general rubric of plunder—involve not only outright force but also the manipulation of governments and markets, often occurring in the grey area between what is legal and what is not.

Trump often is described as “transactional” with good reason: For him, policy is about making deals.

The colonial wars of conquest were a particularly naked example of plunder. Slavery, the appropriation of lands and minerals, and the monopolization of commerce were common features of the time, thinly cloaked, if at all, by the pretense of a “civilizing” mission. But it would be wrong to imagine that plunder disappeared with the end of formal colonial rule. It remains a ubiquitous feature of the world economy, now sometimes cloaked by the veneer of “modernization” or “development.” Because plunder is inherently antagonistic—it pits the plunderers against the those whose resources and livelihoods are plundered—it can and often does morph into violence and war.

C. J. Polychroniou: What about more recent conflicts, like the wars in Bosnia (1992-1995) and Afghanistan (2001-2021)? How did economics figure into these?

James K. Boyce: Economics is not the whole story in these or most conflicts, but it is an important part of why they begin, how long they persist, and how they finally end.

Bosnia emerged as an independent nation during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Some commentators blamed “ancient ethnic hatreds” for the violence that accompanied Yugoslavia’s dissolution, but tensions arising from economic disparities among its provinces were also at play. Within Bosnia, three main “ethnic” groups lived side by side—Muslim Bosniaks, Catholic Croats, and Orthodox Serbs—and the fighting largely devolved along these lines (I place “ethnic” in quotation marks, because apart from religious origins the three were hard to distinguish). But another underlying axis of conflict was the deep economic gulf between urban Bosnians (often Bosniaks), who benefited in Yugoslavia from good education, health, and pension systems, and rural Bosnians (often Serbs), who were excluded from the benefits of engagement in the formal economy.

Once war broke out, opportunities for plunder became a key driving force in the conflict. Hardliners who engaged in ethnic cleansing—killing minorities and driving them out—not only sought to establish homogeneous enclaves for “their” people but also to gain personally from seizing the businesses, homes, land, and other property the victims left behind.

Economic incentives, in the form of promises of postwar reconstruction aid, played a key role in the end of the war, too, persuading the warring parties to sign the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord. Dayton, in a sense, was an aid-for-peace bargain. So economics was very much implicated in all phases of the Bosnian conflict.

The 2001-2021 war in Afghanistan was in many ways a resumption of the 1979-1989 war, with the difference that now it was the United States instead of the Soviet Union that occupied Kabul while the countryside largely remained under the control of the Taliban and regional warlords. As in Bosnia, pronounced economic disparities between urban and rural areas fueled the Afghan conflict, and the Taliban tapped into rural discontent. Wide disparities between Kabul and the rest of the country predated the Soviet and American invasions, and were further exacerbated by the wartime influx of foreigners and their money. Meanwhile, by controlling the opium traffic and taxing cross-border trade, the Taliban built a viable economic base of their own.

Economics played a central role in the U.S. war strategy, but it was not a pretty picture. In 2002, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld instructed his senior aides to come up with “a plan for how we are going to deal with each of these warlords—who is going to get money from whom, on what basis, in exchange for what, what is the quid pro quo, etc.” The U.S. government poured nearly $1 trillion into Afghanistan—$145 billion in reconstruction aid plus $837 billion in military expenditures—this in a country with a GDP of less than $20 billion. War “became the Afghan economy,” as The New York Times put it. The Afghan leadership, unsurprisingly, was more attentive to the demands of foreign donors than to the needs of their own citizens. Massive corruption fueled by external assistance fatally undermined any possibility of building a legitimate and effective state. “Our money was empowering a lot of bad people,” a senior U.S. official recalled. “There was massive resentment among the Afghan people. And we were the most corrupt.”

Today 85% of Afghanistan’s people subsist on less than one dollar a day. Whether the Taliban government or the so-called international community will act to address their deprivation and build a lasting peace is an open question.

C. J. Polychroniou: What role can economics play in peace building?

James K. Boyce: There is much to be said on this topic—it is the focus of the video series—and space precludes a full answer here. Let me highlight just two points.

First, economic policies can either reduce inequalities and the accompanying tensions or exacerbate them. This means not only “vertical” inequality between rich and poor, but also “horizontal” inequalities between groups defined on another basis, such as region, ethnicity, race, or religion. A single-minded focus on the total size of the economic pie—the conventional goals of growth and efficiency—is misplaced when conflicts over how it is sliced threaten to smash the pie.

Second, economic policies can either strengthen or weaken the bargaining power of pro-peace forces vis-à-vis those who seek to perpetuate the conflict. In Bosnia, for example, a crucial postwar issue was the return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their former homes. In some municipalities, local leaders welcomed them; in others, they actively obstructed returns, in part to protect their ill-gotten loot. In its “Open Cities” program, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees used reconstruction aid to reward municipalities that welcomed returns and to induce leaders on the fence to come down on the pro-peace side. The program’s implementation was not perfect, but the idea was sound. Again, “who” matters as much as “what.”

C. J. Polychroniou: How can we apply economics to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza? Can economic policies help to drive peace in those two war-torn areas?

James K. Boyce: The Trump administration’s “America first” stance seems likely to lead to a U.S. pullback from engagement in the tasks of peace building and state building in war-torn societies. In part, this reflects a disillusionment born of the dismal failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, and as those experiences suggest, disengagement may not be entirely a bad thing. But Ukraine and Gaza continue to loom large on the U.S. foreign policy agenda.

Trump often is described as “transactional” with good reason: For him, policy is about making deals. In both Ukraine and Gaza, economic considerations will be a big part of any deals we see. But it is by no means clear that forging a lasting peace will be the top priority for the dealmakers. If not, the end of the current wars could merely set the stage for future ones.

The Ukraine war is exhibit No. 1 of the dangers of fossil-fueled oligarchy. In addition to enormous environmental costs, fossil fuels carry a high political cost: They enable the autocratic rulers of petrostates to govern with little accountability to either their own citizens or norms of international law. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a case in point. As Ukraine illustrates, fossil fueled-oligarchy can metastasize into fossil-fueled war.

Putin has oil and gas; Netanyahu has the United States.

Oil and gas revenues have sustained the Putin regime, notwithstanding international sanctions. The sanctions do, however, drive a wedge between the world market price and what Russia receives, so the prospect of lifting them could act as an incentive for Russia to accept a negotiated settlement. But if the Trump administration eases the sanctions without a peace agreement, while at the same time cutting military and financial aid to Ukraine, this will tilt the terms of the settlement in Russia’s favor.

On the Ukrainian side, the prospect of large-scale reconstruction assistance—as well as an end to the carnage—may provide an incentive, too. It now appears that the responsibility for funding Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction will fall mainly on Europe; whether the European nations will be willing and able to shoulder this burden remains to be seen. In an effort to shore up U.S. support, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has offered a minerals-for-aid deal that would give the U.S. access to Ukraine’s deposits of lithium, uranium, and other critical minerals. But the minerals will be in the ground regardless of who controls the land above them, and it is not evident that the Trump administration will care much about that.

In Gaza, the latest war tragically illustrates what I call the “partition dilemma.” The 1994 Oslo Accord sought to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by establishing the Palestinian Authority as a step toward a two-state solution. In the short run, partition can be an appealing way to stop the shooting. But in the longer run, it can set the stage for renewed conflict, as demagogues on both sides invoke fear of the other to enlist public support from their own people. Partition severely undermines the viability of leaders and parties that would appeal to pro-peace constituencies on both sides.

It is not surprising that 30 years after Oslo, we find Hamas on one side and the Netanyahu government on the other. The two feed off each other in a de facto alliance, each holding up the other as justification for its own politics of demonization. This helps to explain why the Netanyahu government not only tolerated but actively facilitated the flow of cash from Qatar to Hamas. In a candid moment back in 2015, Bezalel Smotrich, who is now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s finance minister, said that “Hamas is an asset.”

The chances that partition will lead to a lasting peace grow even slimmer if one side receives large-scale financial and military support with no strings attached—without peace conditionality—while the other does not. By emboldening one side and embittering the other, the resulting imbalance is a recipe for renewed conflict. Putin has oil and gas; Netanyahu has the United States. Rather than a negotiated settlement, the Israeli government now appears to be seeking a winner-take-all victory. Under the new U.S. administration, Netanyahu will face even fewer constraints than under the last one.

Trump’s talk of taking over Gaza and turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” is reminiscent of plunder during the colonial era, including the dispossession of Native Americans in the United States. Yet in purely economic terms it makes a certain amount of sense: Beach resort development would indeed be a more profitable use of the land than maintaining Gaza as a place of confinement for 2 million refugees. Where other politicians see territory, Trump sees real estate.

The problem, of course, is what to do with Palestinians. There is one place that many of them might go willingly: the land of their grandparents, Israel. The fact that option this is unmentionable, even unthinkable, tells us a lot.

If the war in Gaza and ongoing displacement in the West Bank do not end with the complete expulsion or annihilation of the Palestinians—a prospect that still seems inconceivable—the eventual outcome will be a single state in which the surviving Palestinians have a subordinate and marginalized status. Their struggle will then become one for equal rights. Economic policies could prove helpful at that point, but history suggests it will be a long, hard road.

UN rejects ‘annexation’ proposals for Palestinian territories

KUSHNER PROPERTIES PROMOTING GAZA BEACH FRONT

By AFP
February 26, 2025


'We must resist any normalisation of unlawful conduct,' said Volk - Copyright AFP RODGER BOSCH

Nina LARSON

The UN rights chief on Wednesday rejected as “unlawful” proposals for the annexation of or forced transfer from Palestinian territories, warning they posed a threat to the entire region.

“We must resist any normalisation of unlawful conduct, including proposals for annexation or forced transfer,” Volker Turk told the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Such proposals “could threaten the peace and security of Palestinians and Israelis, and of the wider region”, he warned, insisting that “this is the moment for voices of reason to prevail”.

Turk did not give details, but there have been rising levels of violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank and calls for annexation after Israel announced expanded military operations in the occupied Palestinian territory.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly proposed emptying war-ravaged Gaza of Palestinians.

He has floated the idea of a US takeover of Gaza under which its Palestinian population would be relocated — a proposal met with widespread condemnation, but welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump later appeared to soften his plan, saying he was only recommending the idea, and conceding that the leaders of Jordan and Egypt — the proposed destinations for relocated Gazans — had rejected any effort to move Palestinians against their will.

But the US president’s official social media accounts on Wednesday posted an apparently AI-generated video depicting war-ravaged Gaza rebuilt into a seaside resort, replete with a towering golden statue of Trump himself.


– ‘Impunity begets more violence’ –


Presenting a fresh report on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, Turk said Wednesday: “We urgently need to end the conflict.”

To do so, he said it was vital to hold accountable perpetrators of a vast array of abuses committed since the war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel.

“Israel’s means and methods of warfare have caused staggering levels of casualties and destruction, raising concerns over the commission of war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes,” he said.

But he raised “serious doubts” about the Israeli justice system’s ability to deliver justice “notably in relation to the unlawful killing of Palestinians in Gaza or in the West Bank”.

He also noted that “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups have taken, held, and tortured hostages in Gaza, and have indiscriminately fired projectiles into Israeli territory, amounting to war crimes”.

To his knowledge, none of these groups had taken measures to punish those responsible, he said, adding that such “impunity begets more violence”.

So to did “delegitimising and threatening international institutions that are there to serve people and uphold international law also harms us all”, he warned.

All violations and abuses need to be investigated independently, he said.

While Turk mentioned no names, earlier this month Washington sanctioned the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court Karim Khan over the ICC’s investigations targeting US personnel as well as alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Khan was responsible for the request that led the ICC to issue arrest warrants late last year for Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Op-Ed: ‘Trump Gaza’ — Another disaster-in-waiting?


By Paul Wallis
February 27, 2025


The Gaza Strip requires tens of billions of dollars in recovery and renovation aid after more than a year of war, according to the United Nations - Copyright AFP BASHAR TALEB

The AI-generated Trump Gaza video is arguably a joke in the worst taste possible. It may never be possible to duplicate the sheer level of crassness involved.

You need to watch it to fully appreciate it and maybe lose a few dozen pounds surprisingly quickly.

A synopsis:

A big gold statue of Trump in case your meds aren’t working for some reason.

Hezbollah-like guys with full beards hula dancing.

Trump and Netanyahu sitting by the pool in shorts.

And Elon! And Elon! And Elon! And Elon! And Elon!

Surprise!

A semi-traditional Arabic architecture with a subtle hint of Dubai Meets Old Chicago in a dive bar.

A few supposedly Palestinian people on the remarkably deserted strangely Caucasian-looking beach with at least one custom palm tree.

“But what if it’s true?”, you ask shrewdly, as the phalanx of stern armed guards keep an eye on your cunningly hoarded single remaining inherited aspirin from the 1970s.

If it’s true:

It’ll be the single biggest terrorist target in the Middle East. The poor little dears won’t have to do all that commuting.

It’ll require lots of “money” if you remember that weird-looking word at all.

It’ll require infrastructure on the scale of Miami and therefore can be built easily overnight.

It cannot possibly benefit anyone at all except investors and easy-bake contractors.

It’ll be expensive to look at, let alone visit.

There’s more money in the video than has ever been used for the Palestinian people or anyone else still alive in the area.

It epitomizes the true depth of intellect and sincerity of rich kids with nothing better to do.

It’s almost as elegant as a person in a red cap trying to outwit a KFC bucket but less melodramatic.

Yes, if you’re thinking of being blown up in an overpriced pretentious non-existent two-dimensional farce, this is for you!

Rush out and ask your friendly idiotic local ideological psychopath about bookings today!

Bring a friend, if there are any survivors.

Trump and Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

David Schultz

 February 7, 2025
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Image by Mohammed Ibrahim.

US President Donald Trump’s declaration to remove the Palestinians from Gaza reveals the two truths. First, history repeats itself, but in doing so, it does in farcical ways. Second, whatever shred of rules-based order that was imposed by the United States on international politics is effectively dead.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Karl Marx elegantly opens by stating” “Hegel remarked somewhere that all great world historic facts in person just appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” In the case of Trump’s desire to expel the Palestinians from Gaza, his declaration is the culmination of a nearly eighty-year assault on the Palestinians.

Israel was forged out of the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their lands. In 1947 the United Nations partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas. Israel was formed out of the Jewish territory. But between the partition and the 1948 war, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled from their homes. Over time, and especially under Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli settlements into Palestinian lands continue to expel Palestinians from their homeland.

Over the last year or so, as Israel has devastated Gaza, it has used the pretext of retaliation and national security to continue what the UN started in 1947. Joe Biden’s tacit support or indifference to the plight of the Palestinians and failure to apply pressure to Israel to halt its military action have culminated in Trump’s declaration. All this is tantamount to a Trump’s and Netanyahu’s decision to use force and relocation to permanently and address and bring finality to the Israeli security needs and the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

But such an action violates numerous principles of international law. Already the International Count of Justice has indicated that Israel’s actions may constitute genocide and the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

Going back to the original Nuremberg trials in 1946 and the creation of the International Military Tribunal, war crimes under international law were construed to include the forced removal of people from their lands.

Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide makes it illegal to undertake acts with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

The Geneva Convention of 1949 declares that mass forcible transfers of civilian populations is a violation of international law,

Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights declares “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.”

Article 7.1 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court includes as a crime the displacement of civilian populations or deportation or forcible transfer of a population as a form of a war crime.

There are many other provisions of international law that also make forced relocation a war crime, and they are a form of ethnic cleansing. All these rules are supposedly part of the post-WWII rules-based order to bring peace to the world. These were rules put in place by the United States and the victorious Allies. Yet since WWII many accused the United States of hypocritically disregarding these rules as a prerogative of superpower status.

Now with Trump’s call for the relocation and effective ethnic cleansing of Gaza, what has been stripped naked is US respect and adherence to international law. It makes it harder, if not impossible, for the US to oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as a possible Chinese invasion and takeover of Taiwan. It suggests also that what the Us and Israel are doing is not just tragic but a farce. It is a farce on the fiction of Israel’s latest war, and a farce on US support for human rights, international law, and an effort to find a just solution for the Palestinian-Israel conflict that started nearly eighty years ago.

David Schultz is a professor of political science at Hamline University. He is the author of Presidential Swing States:  Why Only Ten Matter.

A Sales Pitch for Ethnic Cleansing

Stanley L. Cohen

FEBRUARY 7, 2025
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Across the Arab world, ordinary citizens stand and watch the United States sliding into the abyss and wonder, what can the Americans be thinking there? Their institutions, packaged once as the envy of the world with a free society and values of compassion and tolerance …  all blowing away in the winds of history, over the edge and gone. The true Semites, of the Middle East, and not of Europe, gape at this catastrophe of so-called “liberal” Western-style democracy, as it is casually sucked into the moral black hole of a tedious television entertainer, a Wrestlemania con-man, with his billionaire henchmen and techno- Utopianists, who now plunder the richest, most powerful nation in the world as its own elites sit back in comfort, waiting to carve up the spoils. It is like watching Leviathan washed up on the beach, being dismantled by efficient, busy sand crabs. As everyone knows, fish rots first from the head.

To watch an American president openly say, while dutifully standing in the White House before the flag of an Israeli occupier, “I do see a long-term ownership position” for the United States in the Gaza Strip, as if he were showing a triplex condo on Central Park to a lesser Saudi prince, strips away the last veil in this long, sordid dance, this burlesque of empire pretending to moral superiority, while waiting for the right moment to deploy the Art of the Deal. “The Riviera of the Middle East,” he robotically intones, ever the salesman, as a grinning, indicted and fugitive Prime Minister looks on, scarcely able to believe what he is hearing, “The U.S. will take over,” and “we’ll own it.” Of course, everyone from the Achaemenids to Rome to Napoleon has liked Arab beaches, but Palestinians stand with the people of Greenland when they say, “Our land is not for sale;” nor do we yield to conquest, it should be clear to everyone by now. Any U.S. position in Gaza would have well-deserved consequences Americans are not prepared to own.

The American President—like so many before him—has a strange habit of talking about Palestinians as if they have no agency in what befalls them, no choice in the matter. And he talks too, as if what has happened to Palestinians and their land is just random political weather: “The Gaza Strip, which has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades,” he drones on, “it’s been very unlucky, an unlucky place for a long time.” In this, he is not so different from each of his predecessors, pretending in his rhetoric that the U.S. and its citizens have not, in fact, been the subsidizing engineers of Palestinian “bad luck”, the architects of their misfortune, but rather that it just happened to them, and the reasons why are simply lost in the mists of time. In fact, the 118th Congress of the American people, under a Democratic president, delivered 85,000 tons of explosives to Israel, which it dropped on the Gazans—all of this paid for by each and every U.S. taxpayer, red state or blue: over 4000 Hellfire missiles; 14,000 MK-84 2000-lb. bombs, which blast a crater fifty feet wide and three stories deep; many thousands of 1000- and 500-pounders; over 17,000 bomber or drone or missile sorties flown. The total tonnage and complete destruction surpasses that of the Allied bombing of major European cities in the Second World War, or the massive “carpet bombing” dumps over Vietnam. By some estimates, 40% of this destruction came by means of ordinary “dumb bombs,” with unexploded munitions now littering Gaza’s rubble-scape. All this industrial-scale murder, made in the USA, directed at a people without airplanes or ships or tanks or air defenses, or even water and food now—one has to ask, has any military force in modern memory ever acted as cowardly and cruelly as Israel has done?

This moral atrocity had bi-partisan support—Democrats and Republicans, hand-in-hand—in case anyone thinks U.S. politicians are no longer capable of cooperating. It will take an estimated fifteen years to clear the debris alone—that is, unless American troops are so foolish as to land bulldozers, dig in, and attempt to make it their forward operating base, earning the scorn of the free world, and generations of resistance. Imperial over-reach is never far from the American mind, which now prattles from the mouth of its criminal leader, plotting crimes in public, with no one to stop him, as his “efficiency” squads dissolve government agencies in the middle of the night.

All the US tax dollars have only bought it well-deserved contempt and hatred on the Arab street, and around the world. No free-thinking human will ever again entertain the fairy-tale of American liberty and justice, the myth of “Pax Americana.” The meaning of the Holocaust has forever been changed. The shape of Zionist intent was visible all along, and ethnic cleansing now has its sales pitch and its salesman, promising, there will be jobs for everyone!

The mass-murder of over 60,000 innocent, mostly women and children; the maiming and terrorizing of almost two million more; the unrelenting destruction of every standing structure in Gaza; the deliberate starvation of its people and intended spread of disease —all of these activities are the lawless acts of war criminals, led by a delusional, convicted criminal, and paid for by Americans who are now in the eighth decade of a fantasy: that the Palestinians should cease to exist. And now the American president proposes further war crimes openly, to a roomful of applause, musing out loud on what a “world class” development will replace Palestinian towns and cities, as if Gaza were one of his failed casino projects in New Jersey, or his sham on-line university. And the captive “free” press, now quaking in fear before its mighty Potentate, blandly airs without comment his psychotic nihilism, as if concepts of international law no longer exist. For this is what America’s willing dispossession of the Palestinians will mean: that law no longer exists.

It is a dark road to go down, disappearing into a forest of un-broken nightmares. Somewhere in that forest, as the path winds on, are familiar, dark American horrors: black citizens lynched from trees; atomic bombs flashing shadow-people on stone; napalm burning a child running down a road; the Capitol swarmed by a deadly mob of angry men and women desperate to safeguard the privilege of skin-tone that they ache for, but do not have and never will.  A nation born from the genocide of five million Native Americans once again chooses genocide, its original sin, inescapable and mutating through time. There can no longer be any ignorance in the American people about Palestine’s tragedy, or the nature of its fight: Israel’s crimes against Palestinians indict America’s failure to act lawfully as a nation, to stand for what is basic and right. The slow-motion eradication since well before 1948 of Palestinian national rights, sovereign lands and now their people themselves has unfolded in plain view for all to see, and none to deny. The “international community” which once “committed” itself to protect the very rights and lives of all Palestinians, now eagerly awaits real estate brochures for beach-front condos—as if its resistance movements would let that happen. But Palestinians wonder, what will the American people do?

As a dear friend and client of 30 plus years …  a Palestinian resistance leader recently said to me in speaking of the American body politic … “If we might give a word of advice to them: beware of the rot of lawlessness that spreads down from the top, from your elites, your oligarchs. Like a cancer, it will devour your rights sooner than it will defeat ours.”

Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.