by JONATHAN COOK
During Netanyahu’s visit, Trump dropped Washington’s sugar coating of Israel’s 15-month genocidal destruction of Gaza. This was always about ethnic cleansing
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House this week tore the mask off 16 months of gaslighting by western leaders and by the entirety of the western establishment media.
United States President Donald Trump finally dropped Washington’s sugar coating of Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza.
This was always, he told us, a slaughter made in the US. In his words, Washington will now “take over” Gaza and be the one to develop it.
And the goal of the slaughter was always ethnic cleansing.
Palestinians, he said, would be “settled” in a place where they would not have to be “worried about dying every day” – that is, being murdered by Israel using US-supplied bombs.
Gaza, meanwhile, would become the “Riviera of the Middle East”, with the “world’s people” – he meant rich white people like himself – living in luxury beachfront properties in their stead.
If the US “owns” Gaza, as Trump insists, it will also own Gaza’s territorial waters, where there just happen to be fabulous quantities of untapped gas to enrich the enclave’s new “owner”. Palestinians have, of course, never been allowed to develop their gas fields.
Trump may even have let slip inadvertently the true death toll inflicted by Israel’s rampage. He referred to “all of them – there’s 1.7 million or maybe 1.8 million people” being forced out of Gaza.
The population count before 7 October 2023 was between 2.2 and 2.3 million. Where are the other half a million Palestinians? Under the rubble? In unmarked graves? Eaten by feral dogs? Vaporised by 2,000lb US bombs?
Wrecking spree
Trump presented his ethnic cleansing plan as if he had the best interests of the Palestinians at heart. As if he was saving them from a disaster-prone earthquake zone, not from a genocidal neighbour he counts as Washington’s closest ally.
His comments were greeted with shock and horror in western and Arab capitals. Everyone is distancing themselves from his blatant backing for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s population.
But these are the same leaders who kept silent through 15 months of Israel’s levelling of Gaza’s homes, hospitals, schools, universities, libraries, government buildings, mosques, churches and bakeries.
Then, they spoke of Israel’s right to “defend itself” even as Israel caused so much damage the United Nations warned it would take up to 80 years to rebuild the territory – that is, four generations.
What did they think would happen at the end of the wrecking spree they armed and fully supported? Did they imagine the people of Gaza could survive for years without homes, or hospitals, or schools, or water systems, or electricity?
They knew this was the outcome: destitute Palestinians would either risk death in the ruins or be forced to move out.
And western politicians not only let it happen, they told us it was “proportionate”, it was necessary. They smeared anyone who dissented, anyone who called for a ceasefire, anyone who went on a protest march as an antisemite and a Jew hater.
In the US and elsewhere, students – many of them Jewish – staged mass protests on their campuses. In response, university administrations sent in the riot police, beating them. Afterwards, the universities expelled the student organisers and denied them their degrees.
And yet western politicians and media outlets think now is the time to express shock at Trump’s statements?
Still dying
Trump’s appalling, savage honesty simply highlights the depths of mendacity over the preceding 16 months. After all, who did not understand that the three-phase Gaza ceasefire, which came into effect on 19 January, was a lie too.
It was a lie even before the ink dried on the page.
It was a lie because the ceasefire was officially intended not just to create a pause in the bloodshed. It was also supposed to allow for the mitigation of harm to the civilian population, bring the hostilities to an end, and lead to the reconstruction of Gaza.
None of that will happen – at least not for the Palestinians, as Trump has made clear.
Despite its claims, Israel has clearly not ceased firing munitions into Gaza. It has continued killing and maiming Palestinians, including children, even if the carpet bombing has ended for the time being.
In media coverage, these deaths and injuries are never referred to as what they are: violations of the ceasefire.
Israeli snipers may no longer be shooting Palestinian children in the head, as happenedroutinely for 15 months. But the young are still dying.
Without homes, without access to properly functioning hospitals and with only limited access to food and water, Gaza’s children are perishing – mostly out of view, mostly uncounted – from the cold, from disease, from starvation.
Even Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, says it will likely take 10-15 years to rebuild Gaza.
But the people of Gaza don’t have that much time.
This month Israel instituted a ban on the activities of the United Nation’s aid agency, Unrwa, in all of the Palestinian territories it occupies illegally.
Unrwa is the only agency capable of alleviating the worst excesses of the hellscape Israel has created in Gaza. Without it, the recovery process will be further hampered – and more of Gaza’s people will die waiting for help.
A blind eye
But in truth, Netanyahu has no intention of maintaining the “ceasefire” beyond the first stage, the exchange of hostages. Afterwards, he has all but promised to restart the slaughter.
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