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ethnic cleansing
Trump Proves He’s Still No Friend of Gaza
Trump’s “just clean out” comment epitomizes the culmination of decades of U.S. complicity in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, shifting from passive support to active facilitation of ethnic cleansing.
Jan 28, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent “just clean out” comment aboard Air Force One regarding Gaza starkly highlights how U.S. policy has shifted from enabling to actively facilitating Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Alongside his call to expel Palestinians, Trump announced the release of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, munitions previously held back by the Biden administration, just days after lifting sanctions on Israeli settlers.
Rather than signaling a new direction, Trump’s remarks reveal the culmination of America’s ongoing and escalating support for Israel’s actions. This moment also exposes the cynical manipulation of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voters by the Trump administration, which previously used hollow overtures to exploit anti-Democratic sentiment.
During his first term in office, Trump adopted a series of measures that emboldened Israel’s expansionist and militaristic agenda. His recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017 sparked widespread condemnation and global protests. The decision elicited a wide range of reactions. Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, celebrated it as a historic and rightful acknowledgment of their capital. In stark contrast, it provoked widespread outrage among Palestinians and throughout the Arab and Muslim world, sparking protests and condemnations. In response, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) declared East Jerusalem the capital of Palestine and warned the U.S. of potential repercussions.
Trump’s cynical attempts to win over pro-Palestinian voters only highlight the depth of his gaslighting and abuse.
The move, which flew in the face of decades of U.S. policy and international consensus, led to violent crackdowns on Palestinian demonstrators. The backlash against Trump’s Jerusalem decision extended beyond Palestinian communities. Protests erupted worldwide, from Istanbul to Jakarta, reflecting a collective outrage against U.S. complicity in Israel’s occupation.
Trump’s presidency also saw recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a region internationally recognized as Syrian territory. The Golan Heights, seized by Israel from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967, was formally annexed by Israel in 1981, a move that remained unrecognized by the international community until President Trump’s proclamation. This unprecedented decision not only broke with decades of international consensus but also heightened tensions and further complicated the already fraught Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This move further cemented Trump’s legacy as an enabler of Israel’s expansionism and drew condemnation from both Arab states and Iran. The recognition emboldened Israel’s settlement expansion in the West Bank, with Trump consistently turning a blind eye to illegal land grabs and settler violence.
In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump made calculated overtures to Palestinian and Arab-American voters, particularly in areas like Michigan’s Hamtramck. He attempted to portray himself as sympathetic to Arab and Muslim concerns, even naming Jill Stein as one of his “favorite politicians,” presumably to appeal to disaffected progressives. Yet these gestures were nothing more than political theater. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) conducted an exit poll revealing a significant shift in Muslim voter preferences during the 2024 presidential election in Trump’s favor. It’s important to note that while Arab and Muslim Americans have been scapegoated for Trump’s electoral success in certain quarters, their communities have consistently organized against his policies. They are ultimately victims in a U.S. electoral system that offered no positive options.
Trump’s rhetoric and policies have not only emboldened Israel but also placed the U.S. on a path of proactive engagement as opposed to facilitator in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This is only underscored by his cynical response to the potential of rebuilding Gaza where he referenced the “phenomenal location” and “the best weather.” When placed in the context of past remarks by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the comments take on added weight. Kushner previously suggested that Gaza’s waterfront property could hold significant potential if efforts were directed toward building up livelihoods. He described the situation as “a bit of an unfortunate situation” and stated, “from Israel’s perspective, I would try to relocate the people and clean it up.” This rhetoric is not an aberration but a culmination of U.S. policies that have systematically marginalized Palestinians and emboldened Israeli aggression.
Trump’s “just clean out” comment epitomizes the culmination of decades of U.S. complicity in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, shifting from passive support to active facilitation of ethnic cleansing. His past administration’s policies, from recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to endorsing sovereignty over the Golan Heights, reflect a blatant disregard for international law and Palestinian rights. These actions, paired with hollow overtures to Arab and Muslim voters, reveal a strategy of gaslighting and manipulation. Trump’s cynical attempts to win over pro-Palestinian voters only highlight the depth of his gaslighting and abuse. As the U.S. continues down an escalating path of proactively engaging in ethnic cleansing and genocide, we must demand accountability and an end to complicity in these atrocities.
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The Cease-Fire Won’t Put an End to Palestinian Oppression
Early signs already indicate that the second Trump administration will, at the very least, further enable illegal Israeli expansion, especially upon the occupied West Bank.
Jan 16, 2025
Until recently, the American-funded Israeli genocide of Palestinians unsurprisingly continued without a stop in sight. On January 13, 2025, Israeli attacks assassinated at least 45 Gazans. Shortly after these attacks, however, a cease-fire and hostage deal (reportedly split into three phases) was confirmed on January 15, 2025. Importantly, Steven Witkoff, selected by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to be his special envoy in the Middle East, has forced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a cease-fire and hostage plan in two months, existing in stark contrast with the Biden administration’s incompetent (and frankly cruel) inability to pressure Netanyahu into accepting a plan over the past year.
Nevertheless, even though the incoming Trump administration secured a cease-fire and hostage deal, it’s impossible to truly know what will come next. Trump is notoriously unpredictable. According to recent estimates from Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 45,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered since October 7, 2023. In the days leading up to his presidential inauguration, many around the United States and the world at large are uncertain about how Trump will treat Israel’s ongoing genocide and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. To help answer these questions, I interviewed a variety of scholars.
First, it’s important to assess Trump’s impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his first term. On the one hand, Trump perpetually enabled Israeli expansionism. “Trump recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of Jerusalem, [and] he recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights,” political scientist Norman Finkelstein told me. Further, the two-state proposal that Trump disclosed in 2020 radically reversed the policy of his predecessors by allowing Israel to annex the Jordan Valley and the vast majority of illegal settlements in the West Bank, while merely allotting 15% of historic Palestine toward a Palestinian state. Trump’s first administration simply didn’t value Palestinian sovereignty, a sentiment shared by the Biden administration. “Biden could have reversed [Trump’s] decisions, but elected not to,” Finkelstein further explained to me. The Biden administration’s encouragement of Israel’s genocide are simply an outgrowth of Trump’s previous policies, which approved of Israeli expansionism.
Although criticizing Liz Cheney and other members of Washington’s war machine, Trump remains perpetually ignorant of his own hawkish behavior.
On the other hand, Trump partly abandoned the Palestinian issue during his first term. “Trump (or more precisely, Kushner and others) tried to sideline the Palestinian issue completely and to focus on promoting normalization between Israel, the Gulf States, and Saudi Arabia instead,” international relations scholar Stephen Walt told me. After feeling deserted by the Trump administration, many Palestinians, according to Walt, came to believe that they “had no options other than violence.” Since the Biden administration continued Trump’s policies of abandonment, “October 7 was the result.”
While Finkelstein and Walt highlight the negative consequences of Trump’s policies toward Israel, famed Israeli revisionist historian Benny Morris views Trump’s previous actions differently. “[Trump] recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which previous U.S. presidents should have done, but apart from giving Israelis a good feeling, it had no impact on the conflict,” Morris told me. Nevertheless, by arguing that Trump was right to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and that previous American presidents “should have,” Morris explicitly acknowledges and approves of the Israeli expansionism that Trump fomented, undermining Morris’ credibility to speak on behalf of whether or not the Palestinians perceived Trump’s actions to be escalatory.
Early signs already indicate that the second Trump administration will, at the very least, further enable illegal Israeli expansion, especially upon the occupied West Bank. Two of Trump’s key appointees, Pete Hegseth (Defense Department) and Mike Huckabee (ambassador to Israel), dismiss a two-state solution. Further, Huckabee habitually denies Palestinian existence itself, identifies the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” and believes that the entirety of the West Bank belongs to Israel. David Friedman, who remains a close associate with Trump and was U.S. ambassador to Israel under his first administration, recently wrote a book arguing for a single Jewish state, which would include the West Bank and likely Gaza. Understanding that a second Trump presidency enables further Israeli expansionism, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that “now is the time” to seek sovereignty over the settlements in the West Bank.
It’s entirely likely that the second Trump administration will encourage Israeli expansion over the West Bank to a degree that would guarantee the prevention of an independent Palestinian state from emerging. Former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative Sari Nusseibeh, previously one of the most visible Palestinian peace activists advocating for a two-state solution, maintains, “Under Trump, Israel’s policy will be the geographic and political dismemberment of the embryonic Palestinian state, bringing all this under a hegemonic Israeli authority, with total disregard to international opinion.”
Although a cease-fire and hostage deal has been achieved, Trump promised Netanyahu that his administration would maintain support for Israel even if it violated the agreement, according to a recent report. While a cease-fire was previously reached between Israel and Lebanon, Israel has continued air striking southern and eastern Lebanon. Neither the Trump nor Biden administration has punished Israel, and it’s unlikely that they will. Recently, Hegseth expressed his support for Israel to kill “every last member of Hamas.” In practicality, this entails that high-ranking members of the Trump administration approve of Israel intensifying its indiscriminate assault on Gaza. In addition to the possibility of “the elimination of Gaza as a Palestinian entity and the continuing [encroachment] on the West Bank and its absorption into the state of Israel,” it’s very likely that there will be “more killing and ethnic cleansing” under the second Trump administration, cultural studies scholar Iain Chambers told me. Such wariness regarding the possible perpetuation of genocide and Israeli expansionism under a second Trump administration is also shared by Walt: “The genocide/ethnic cleansing will continue, and I think it is likely that Israel will annex the West Bank (and perhaps portions of Syria and Lebanon).”
Although the future is never entirely given, it’s possible to gauge how the second Trump administration will treat Israel. Based on Trump’s disastrous actions toward Palestinians (during his first term and now), it’s plausible to assume that the second Trump administration will sharply enable Israeli expansionism at the very least, although the simultaneous escalation of Israel’s genocide is also a likely option. Although criticizing Liz Cheney and other members of Washington’s war machine, Trump remains perpetually ignorant of his own hawkish behavior. While hopelessness may ensue upon the realization that the second Trump administration will have disastrous consequences for Palestinian livelihood, one must resist feeling discouraged. Perpetual, collective political action still remains the only viable form of resistance to Washington’s endless support of oppression.
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How US Media Hide Truths About the Gaza War
Despite exceptional coverage at times, what was most profoundly important about war in Gaza—what it was like to be terrorized, massacred, maimed, and traumatized—remained almost entirely out of view.
Jan 15, 2025
A few days before the end of 2024, the independent magazine +972 reported that “Israeli army forces stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital compound in Beit Lahiya, culminating a nearly week-long siege of the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza.” While fire spread through the hospital, its staff issued a statement saying that “surgical departments, laboratory, maintenance, and emergency units have been completely burned,” and patients were “at risk of dying at any moment.”
The magazine explained that “the assault on medical facilities in Beit Lahiya is the latest escalation in Israel’s brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, which over the last three months forcibly displaced the vast majority of Palestinians living in the area.” The journalism from +972—in sharp contrast to the dominant coverage of the Gaza war from U.S. media—has provided clarity about real-time events, putting them in overall context rather than episodic snippets.
+972 Magazine is the work of Palestinian and Israeli journalists who describe their core values as “a commitment to equity, justice, and freedom of information”—which necessarily means “accurate and fair journalism that spotlights the people and communities working to oppose occupation and apartheid.” But the operative values of mainstream U.S. news outlets have been very different.
What was sinister about proclaiming “Israel’s 9/11” was what happened after America’s 9/11.
Key aspects of how the U.S. establishment has narrated the “war on terror” for more than two decades were standard in American media and politics from the beginning of the Gaza war in October 2023. For instance:
- Routine discourse avoided voices condemning the U.S. government for its role in the slaughter of civilians.
- The U.S. ally usually eluded accountability for its high-tech atrocities committed from the air.
- Civilian deaths in Gaza were habitually portrayed as unintended.
- Claims that Israel was aiming to minimize civilian casualties were normally taken at face value.
- Media coverage and political rhetoric stayed away from acknowledging that Israel’s actions might fit into such categories as “mass murder” or “terrorism.”
- Overall, news media and U.S. government officials emitted a mindset that Israeli lives really mattered a lot more than Palestinian lives.
The Gaza war has received a vast amount of U.S. media attention, but how much it actually communicated about the human realities was a whole other matter. The belief or unconscious notion that news media were conveying war’s realities ended up obscuring those realities all the more. And journalism’s inherent limitations were compounded by media biases.
During the first five months of the war, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post applied the word “brutal” or its variants far more often to Palestinians (77%) than to Israelis (23%). The findings, in a study by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), pointed to an imbalance that occurred “even though Israeli violence was responsible for more than 20 times as much loss of life.” News articles and opinion pieces were remarkably in the same groove; “the lopsided rate at which ‘brutal’ was used in op-eds to characterize Palestinians over Israelis was exactly the same as the supposedly straight news stories.”
Despite exceptional coverage at times, what was most profoundly important about war in Gaza—what it was like to be terrorized, massacred, maimed, and traumatized—remained almost entirely out of view. Gradually, surface accounts reaching the American public came to seem repetitious and normal. As death numbers kept rising and months went by, the Gaza war diminished as a news topic, while most talk shows seldom discussed it.
As with the slaughter via bombardment, the Israeli-U.S. alliance treated the increasing onset of starvation, dehydration, and fatal disease as a public-relations problem. Along the way, official pronouncements—and the policies they tried to justify—were deeply anchored in the unspoken premise that some lives really matter and some really don’t.
The propaganda approach was foreshadowed on October 8, 2023, with Israel in shock from the atrocities that Hamas had committed the previous day. “This is Israel’s 9/11,” the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations told reporters in New York, and he repeated: “This is Israel’s 9/11.” Meanwhile, in a PBS News Weekend interview, Israel’s ambassador to the United States declared: “This is, as someone said, our 9/11.”
What was sinister about proclaiming “Israel’s 9/11” was what happened after America’s 9/11. Wearing the cloak of victim, the United States proceeded to use the horrible tragedy that occurred inside its borders as an open-ended reason to kill in the name of retaliation, self-protection, and, of course, the “war on terror.”
As Israel’s war on Gaza persisted, the explanations often echoed the post-9/11 rationales for the “war on terror” from the U.S. government: authorizing future crimes against humanity as necessary in the light of certain prior events. Reverberation was in the air from late 2001, when the Pentagon’s leader Donald Rumsfeld asserted that “responsibility for every single casualty in this war, whether they’re innocent Afghans or innocent Americans, rests at the feet of the al Qaeda and the Taliban.” After five weeks of massacring Palestinian people, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “any civilian loss is a tragedy”—and quickly added that “the blame should be placed squarely on Hamas.”
The licenses to kill were self-justifying. And they had no expiration date.
This piece was originally published by MediaNorth. It is adapted from the afterword in the paperback edition of Norman Solomon’s latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine (The New Press).
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