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Tag: war crimes

  • Kushner’s “Future of Gaza”: A Humanitarian Obscenity, Not a Peace Plan

    Kushner’s “Future of Gaza”: A Humanitarian Obscenity, Not a Peace Plan

    By Amal Zadok

    Kushner’s “Future of Gaza” is not a peace plan; it is a speculative real‑estate prospectus laid over a mass grave, an investor deck pitched on top of fresh rubble and uncounted bodies.  This brutality dressed in the language of “opportunity” and “master plans” is not statesmanship but moral bankruptcy of the highest order, especially in a territory where tens of thousands have been killed and more than 80% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed by war.

    Skyscrapers on top of corpses

    Jared Kushner arrives in Davos with glossy slides of 180 towers along Gaza’s shattered coastline, talking of ports, airports, logistics corridors and “catastrophic success,” as if he were zoning vacant desert land instead of a territory systematically pulverised for years.  He boasts of timelines of “two or three years” to rebuild Rafah, as though bulldozers and cranes were the missing ingredient rather than the deliberate destruction of an entire society and its basic infrastructure.

    The same presentation that sells Gaza as a “regional hub” requiring tens of billions in capital does not pause to name a single family still digging loved ones from under concrete, a single amputated child, a single mass grave.  When the slides show towers and yacht marinas but never cemeteries and bombed schools, this is not reconstruction; it is a visual coup against reality, a marketing campaign against memory.

    Genocide repackaged as redevelopment

    While Kushner and his patrons speak of “demilitarization” and “free market principles,” Gaza’s human losses remain almost unmentionable, reduced to an awkward footnote to the grand business vision.  Independent tallies already report tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, with epidemiologists warning that war injuries, disease and hunger could easily push the total toward or beyond 100,000 deaths in the medium term; that scale of killing matches the language of genocide and ethnic cleansing far more than it does the vocabulary of “development.”

    This is not a “market opportunity”; it is a demographic wound carved into a trapped population of barely 2.2 million.  The language of the plan is not the language of mourning, justice or accountability; it is the jargon of venture capital—“special economic zones,” “investment funds,” “GDP targets,” “microgrants”—sprayed like perfume over the stench of war crimes.  A territory in which perhaps one in fifty residents has already been killed is being treated as a distressed asset to be flipped, not a society entitled to self‑determination, reparations, and the prosecution of those who orchestrated its devastation before a competent international court.

    The Board of Peace: genocide for a fee

    The so‑called “Board of Peace” is the most obscene twist of all: a one‑billion‑dollar buy‑in for a permanent seat at the table where Gaza’s future will be decided.  This is not peace building; it is a pay‑to‑play cartel that monetises both suffering and sovereignty, turning an occupied, bombed people into the underlying asset of a global prestige club.

    Chaired by Donald Trump and populated by hand‑picked elites, the board offers plutocrats and compliant politicians a new status symbol: “I helped reshape Gaza”—for a price.  The promise that all funds will go to reconstruction does not cleanse the structure of its immorality; buying your way into steering the fate of a stateless population turns human rights into a luxury commodity.  When peace has an entry fee of one billion dollars, justice has already been priced out of the room, and genocide has acquired its own VIP lounge.

    Tony Blair, from Iraq’s lies to Gaza’s loot

    And then there is Tony Blair, whose name and institute have circulated around “day‑after” schemes and advisory circuits linked to Trump’s Gaza ambitions, even if reports now suggest he has been dropped from the final shortlist for the board.  A politician who helped sell the Iraq war on the basis of “weapons of mass destruction” that did not exist, and whose legacy is inseparable from hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, has no moral authority to co‑design—formally or informally—the future of another Arab population bombed and displaced under the banner of “security.”

    Blair’s presence in this orbit is not an anomaly; it is the system revealing itself.  The same political class that lied a country into war two decades ago now returns, scrubbed and suited, to sanitise an experiment in colonial redevelopment: dispossess, bombard, blockade, then invite the architects and apologists of previous disasters to broker the “rebuild” in partnership with investors.  In this cycle, Western leaders are never exiled by their failures; they are recycled into advisory boards and consulting roles, endlessly monetising the ruins they helped create.

    Erasing Palestinians to sell the land

    Kushner’s masterplan speaks fluently about towers, income levels, industrial zones and data centres, but stutters into silence when it comes to who owns the land, who governs the territory and who grants permission.  There is vague talk of technocrats and executive committees, of partner states and vetted locals, but no meaningful space for Palestinians to define their own future outside the conditions imposed by their jailers and their jailers’ patrons.

    This is how erasure works in the twenty‑first century.  You do not have to deny that Palestinians exist; you simply frame them as a logistics problem inside a larger story about corridors, ports and foreign capital.  You point at destroyed refugee camps and call them “phases” of a master plan.  You turn survivors into statistics and then into target demographics for tourism, cheap labour in someone else’s Riviera built on the ruins of their homes.

    Free markets over mass graves

    At the heart of the plan lies the dogma that “free market economy principles” will heal what bombs have broken.  Its authors talk as if unemployment, poverty and blockade were glitches in a spreadsheet rather than the deliberate tools of a regime of control, apartheid and dispossession.  By pretending that skyscrapers and special economic zones can substitute for justice, they ensure that the structural violence underpinning Gaza’s suffering remains untouched, unexamined and unpunished.

    “Catastrophic success,” Kushner calls it: a phrase so revealing it hardly needs commentary.  Catastrophe is the ongoing reality of Gazans; “success” is reserved for those who can turn that catastrophe into contracts, portfolios and keynote speeches in the Alps.  The dead, the displaced and the starved are not invited to Davos; they are the unacknowledged collateral in someone else’s growth projections and the invisible cost of a new speculative frontier.

    An unforgivable obscenity

    To unveil a glittering business blueprint for “New Gaza” while bodies are still decomposing under collapsed homes is not just premature; it is an unforgivable obscenity.  It tells the world that Palestinian life is so cheap that even their mourning period can be shortened to fit an investment cycle.  It signals to every future aggressor that you can flatten a territory and, if you have powerful friends, return as the visionary who will monetise the ruins.

    This is the line that must be drawn. A just future for Gaza begins with ceasefire, full humanitarian access, and international prosecutions for war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide—not with glossy renders, not with billion‑dollar seats on a “Board of Peace,” not with the rehabilitation of men whose careers are built on lies that killed entire nations.  Until the architects and accomplices of this horror stand in the dock instead of on Davos stages, every tower they imagine for Gaza will be nothing more than another form of occupation, another monument to a world that chose profit over people—and another reminder that no skyscraper, no board, and no master plan will ever be tall enough to cast a shadow long enough to hide the blood on their hands.

    References

    BBC News. (2026, January 21). Jared Kushner lays out Trump‑backed “master plan” for post‑war Gaza. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jared-kushner-lays-trump-backed-master-plan-post/story?id=129461124

    CNN. (2026, January 22). 180 skyscrapers for Gaza: Trump’s son‑in‑law Kushner unveils “masterplan” for enclave’s reconstruction. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/22/middleeast/kushner-trump-postwar-plan-gaza-board-peace-davos-intl-latam

    Breitbart / UPI. (2026, January 22). Kushner unveils $25B Gaza masterplan including skyscrapers, housing. https://www.breitbart.com/news/kushner-unveils-25b-gaza-masterplan-including-skyscrapers-housing

    BBC News. (2026, January 22). US unveils plans for “New Gaza” with skyscrapers. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7mmpljze7o

    Reuters. (2026, January 22). US pitches “New Gaza” development plan; Israeli fire kills five Palestinians. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-pitches-new-gaza-development-plan-israeli-fire-kills-five-palestinians-2026-01-22

    CNN. (2026, January 18). Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza to require $1 billion payment for permanent membership. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/18/politics/board-of-peace-gaza-trump-payment-membership

    CNN. (2026, January 20). Trump says Board of Peace established to oversee reconstruction of Gaza “might” replace the United Nations. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/20/politics/trump-gaza-board-of-peace-united-nations

    ABC News (Australia). (2025, November 18). As Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza gets UN approval, critics warn it turns ruins into real estate. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-19/rebuilding-gaza-donald-trump-plan-investment-potential/106006900

    The New York Times. (2024, February 21). War and illness could kill 85,000 Gazans in 6 months, new analysis finds. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/health/israel-gaza-war-deaths.html

    Wikipedia. (updated 2026). Casualties of the Gaza war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war

    Al Jazeera. (2025, January 15). The human toll of Israel’s war on Gaza – by the numbers. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/15/the-human-toll-of-israels-war-on-gaza-by-the-numbers

    The Washington Post. (2026, January 22). Trump’s “master plan” for Gaza contrasts with reality on the ground. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/01/22/trump-kushner-gaza-plan

    The Independent. (2026, January 22). Is Trump building peace – or a property deal on the graves of Gazans? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/trump-gaza-kushner-peace-board-property-b2869059.html

    The Guardian. (2025, December 8). Tony Blair reportedly dropped from Trump’s Gaza “board of peace” shortlist. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/dec/08/tony-blair-reportedly-dropped-from-donald-trump-gaza-board-of-peace-shortlist

    Al Jazeera. (2025, December 9). Tony Blair ruled out of Trump’s proposed Gaza “peace board”. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/9/tony-blair-ruled-out-of-trumps-proposed-gaza-peace-board-report

    France 24. (2025, December 9). Tarnished legacy: What role for Tony Blair in Trump peace plan for Gaza? https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20251209-tarnished-legacy-what-role-for-tony-blair-in-trump-peace-plan-for-gaza

    ©️2026 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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  • Wrong and dangerous strategy: appeasing a bully 

    Wrong and dangerous strategy: appeasing a bully 

    Trump has turned Gaza into the set of The Apprentice: governments pay to sit in his boardroom over the ruins, and their only real job is to obey or get fired. Appeasing that is not strategy; it is complicity.

    By Amal Zadok

    Appeasing Donald Trump is not a strategy; it is complicity. Every time governments, institutions and political elites bite their tongues in the name of “stability,” they are not moderating him; they are underwriting his attempt to replace law with money, fear and his own ego as the organising principle of world politics. A man who combines the power of the U.S. presidency with the traits of a malignant narcissist, an obsession with personal “glory,” and open enablement of mass atrocities is not a “difficult partner”; he is a direct threat to any order that claims to be based on human dignity and the rule of law.

    Malignant narcissism is not mere vanity with extra hairspray. It is a configuration of grandiosity, lack of empathy, paranoia about enemies and a willingness to use cruelty to protect a fragile ego. In Trump’s case, this has meant delight in domination, compulsive lying, routine public humiliation of opponents and a chilling indifference to mass suffering, most starkly visible in his embrace of Israeli policies in Gaza and his political cover for a war that has devastated an already trapped population. For such a personality, other people’s lives and entire territories are props in his heroic narrative: if flattening a people or turning them into bargaining chips makes him look “strong” and pleases his base, then it is not a moral dilemma, it is an opportunity.

    The same pathology is visible in his maniacal fixation on the Nobel Peace Prize, and the humiliating spectacle of allies staging fake “peace” honours to soothe him. When a foreign leader like Marina Machado feels compelled to hand him a framed imitation of an accolade he never earned, it is not diplomacy; it is ritualised ego‑massage that tells every despot watching that even democratic politicians will debase themselves rather than confront his fantasies.

    This pathology is written all over his latest creation: the so‑called Board of Peace for Gaza. On paper, it is billed as a mechanism to oversee reconstruction and governance; in reality, it is The Apprentice metastasised to a global scale, with Gaza as the burned‑out set and whole governments auditioning for his favour. A $1 billion payment secures a permanent seat on this Trump‑chaired “board,” while poorer states are relegated to rotating spots, turning the future of a shattered territory into a billion‑dollar membership club. This is not multilateralism; it is monetised feudalism. It is “The Apprentice: Gaza Edition” – pay to get into the boardroom, sit around his table, follow his orders, and hope you are not the next one he effectively tells: “You’re fired.”

    The Board of Peace is also a direct attack on the UN‑centred system that, however imperfectly, recognised Palestinian rights and tried to put reconstruction under universal, not personal, authority. By dangling access to Gaza’s future as a perk for those willing to buy in, Trump is building a private mini‑UN in his own image: hierarchical, cash‑gated, unaccountable and centred on his personality. States that treat this scheme as just another diplomatic forum, rather than a frontal assault on multilateralism, are not hedging; they are helping him prove that you can sideline global institutions if you are ruthless and rich enough.

    None of this is accidental. Trump has begun saying the quiet part aloud. In a recent interview he declared that “my own morality, my own mind” is “the only thing that can stop me,” brushing aside international law and institutional checks as unnecessary constraints on his quest for “global supremacy.” For a man who has shown that his “morality” stretches to cheering bombardments, openly musing about annexations and threatening the use of force abroad, that line is not colourful rhetoric; it is a confession of megalomania. It tells allies and institutions exactly how he sees them: not as co‑equal guardians of a rules‑based order, but as furniture in a set he believes he owns.

    The Davos episode over Greenland and Canada completes the picture. Trump has openly pushed to “acquire” Greenland, tying tariffs and other economic weapons to the goal of securing “complete and total” U.S. control, before offering the thinnest possible reassurance that he will not, for the moment, use military force. He used a global stage to humiliate Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, sneering that “Canada lives because of the United States” and instructing Ottawa to “remember that” before daring to criticise his Greenland ambitions. This is not alliance management; it is hostage‑taking conducted in the language of reality television and mob protection rackets.

    His behaviour toward Canada and Denmark illustrates the pattern that runs from NATO capitals to Gaza’s ruins. Security guarantees, trade access and even basic recognition are treated as favours that can be withdrawn if insufficient loyalty is displayed. Tariffs are brandished like a baseball bat; territorial integrity is discussed as if it were a line item in a real‑estate portfolio; prime ministers are reduced to contestants he can dress down in front of the cameras. When allies respond with nervous laughter, cautious communiqués and private grumbling instead of coordinated pushback, they teach him exactly the wrong lesson: that they will swallow humiliation and coercion rather than risk open confrontation.

    Layer this onto Gaza and the result is grotesque. Trump is offering political and diplomatic cover to a campaign that has destroyed much of the strip’s infrastructure and displaced the overwhelming majority of its population, then presenting himself as the indispensable architect of what comes next. Under his plan, those who pay the price of his Board of Peace get influence; those who cannot pay get whatever trickles down. The people of Gaza themselves are spectators in a show supposedly scripted for their benefit. Their homes and bodies are reduced to scenery for a global audition in which states compete to impress the man who helped enable their destruction in the first place.

    Supporters will insist this is “hard‑nosed deal‑making” and a necessary way to get things done in a brutal world. That is precisely the illusion appeasement feeds. When governments attend his board, they legitimise the idea that the future of a devastated people belongs in a private club chaired by the man who cheered on their devastation. When media treat his “Board of Peace” branding and his “only my morality can stop me” line as colourful copy, they normalise the premise that checks and balances are optional extras in a nuclear‑armed superpower. When Canada, Denmark and other allies respond to tariff blackmail and annexation fantasies with little more than pained diplomacy, they validate his worldview that laws and treaties are decorations, not boundaries.

    The stakes extend beyond Trump himself. Autocrats and would‑be strongmen everywhere are watching. They see a U.S. president who tries to build a pay‑to‑play mini‑UN over Gaza, who declares that only his own morality restrains him, who bullies allies over territory and trade, and who still finds a line of states willing to buy seats at his table. If that behaviour is indulged, why shouldn’t they copy it? If the “leader of the free world” can treat international law as a suggestion and treat entire nations like contestants on a show, the message is clear: there is no real price for running the world as a personal franchise, so long as you are powerful enough.

    Refusing to appease Trump means more than tut‑tutting and diplomatic eye‑rolling. It means:

    -Boycotting and delegitimising the Board of Peace, insisting that Gaza’s reconstruction and governance be anchored in transparent, UN‑based mechanisms where seats are earned by responsibility, not bought with cash and flattery, and prosecution of those responsible for the genocide and war crimes in Gaza.

    -Responding to tariff blackmail, Greenland fantasies and open insults against allied leaders with coordinated economic, legal and diplomatic measures, rather than fragmented “concerns” that he can ignore one by one.

    -Treating declarations like “only my morality can stop me” as a mandate to reinforce external checks—courts, parliaments, alliances—not as a quirky line to be replayed on talk shows.

    Appeasing Donald Trump—appeasing his bullying, his megalomania, his reality‑show Board of Peace, his threats against allies and his contempt for law—is not prudence. It is surrender. Each time leaders choose silence over truth, access over principle or a paid‑up seat at his fake mini‑UN over a real fight for international law, they edge the world closer to a future in which power answers only to itself. A political system that wants to survive, and a world that wants to remain even minimally just, cannot afford the luxury of appeasing this bully any longer.

    References

    1.New York Times. (2026, January 18). $1 billion in cash buys a permanent seat on Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/world/middleeast/trump-board-of-peace-gaza.html[nytimes

    2.PBS NewsHour. (2026, January 19). $1 billion contribution secures permanent seat on Trump’s “Board of Peace.” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/1-billion-contribution-secures-permanent-seat-on-trumps-board-of-peace

    3.CNN. (2026, January 18). Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza to require $1 billion payment for permanent membership. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/18/politics/board-of-peace-gaza-trump-payment-membership

    4.The Atlantic. (2026, January 17). Trump’s billion-dollar Board of Peace. https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/01/trump-billion-dollar-board-of-peace/685671/

    5.The Wall Street Journal. (2026, January 19). Trump’s $1 billion-a-seat diplomacy club takes aim at the U.N. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trumps-1-billion-a-seat-diplomacy-club-takes-aim-at-the-u-n-2bccd9f9

    6.Business Times. (2026, January 19). What to know about Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza. https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/global/billion-dollar-membership-fee-what-know-about-trumps-board-peace-gaza

    7.PBS NewsHour. (2026, January 21). Trump’s Board of Peace is dividing countries in Europe and the Middle East. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/divisions-emerge-among-western-european-nations-over-trumps-board-of-peace-for-gaza

    8.The Hill. (2026, January 21). Trump to Carney: “Canada lives because of the United States.” https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5699148-trump-carney-canada-greenland/

    9.Global News. (2026, January 20). Trump says Canada “lives” because of U.S. https://globalnews.ca/news/11622445/donald-trump-mark-carney-davos-speech/

    10.Axios. (2026, January 21). Trump responds to Carney in Davos: “Canada lives because of the United States.” https://www.axios.com/2026/01/21/trump-davos-speech-carney-canada

    11.People Magazine. (2026, January 8). Trump says “my own morality” is “the only thing” stopping his global supremacy. https://people.com/donald-trump-says-morality-only-thing-stopping-global-supremacy-11881997

    12.Esquire. (2026, January 8). Trump says his “morality” is the only thing stopping him. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a69960918/trump-morality-in-check/

    13.New York Times. (2026, January 8). Trump addresses Venezuela, Greenland and presidential power in new interview. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/trump-interview-power-morality.html

    14.CNN. (2026, January 20). Trump says Board of Peace meant to oversee Gaza reconstruction and security. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/20/politics/trump-gaza-board-of-peace-united-nations

    15.PBS NewsHour. (2026, January 19). News Wrap: World leaders weigh whether to join Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/january-19-2026-pbs-news-hour-full-episode

    ©️2026 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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  • Trump’s Narco Hypocrisy: Pardoning the Kingpins, Bombing the Nobodies

    Trump’s Narco Hypocrisy: Pardoning the Kingpins, Bombing the Nobodies

    by Amal Zadok

    Trump’s second term has become a moral crime scene: a president who claims to fight terror and drugs is literally embracing a former jihadist whose past helped kill Americans, pardoning a narco‑president whose cocaine helped destroy American lives, arming Netanyahu as Gaza is reduced to rubble, and ordering missiles on nameless men in boats while powerful killers walk free. This is not “America First”; it is a grotesque alliance of blood‑stained elites, wrapped in a flag and sold as patriotism.

    The Syrian visitor is President Ahmed al‑Sharaa, once a rising figure in jihadist‑linked networks that drew a multimillion‑dollar U.S. bounty and were treated as a direct threat to American lives. A man whose circles were on U.S. terrorism lists is now ushered through White House security as an honoured guest, his history airbrushed away in the glow of photo‑ops. Trump does not just “talk” to him in some neutral venue; he grants him the prestige, the symbolism, the legitimacy of the Oval Office, and in doing so spits on the memory of Americans killed by the very networks this man once served.

    MAGA voters were told Trump would be the hammer of justice against jihadists, that he would avenge the dead and protect the living, that he would end “stupid wars” while keeping America safe. Millions of decent people believed those promises in good faith because they wanted fewer body bags, less chaos, and real protection for their families. They were not wrong to want those things; they were wrong about the man they trusted to deliver them.

    Then there is the ex‑president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández. This man did not just “look the other way.” He helped turn his country into a narco highway, enabling cartels to move hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States – a river of powder that translates directly into overdoses, gang violence, shattered families and dead Americans.

    This is not some technical, victimless crime; it is mass poisoning delivered by the ton. A U.S. jury listened to evidence and concluded, beyond reasonable doubt, that this head of state was a key player in a vast cocaine conspiracy, and a federal judge handed down a 45‑year sentence because anything less would mock the victims. And Trump blew it away: in December 2025 he signed a sweeping pardon that opened the prison gates for Hernández and declared his record wiped clean. This is policy, not accident.

    With one pen stroke, he tells every grieving American parent whose child died on cocaine or crack: your pain is negotiable, your justice is reversible, and if a man wears a presidential sash, his crimes are redeemable. He tells every cop who risked their life on the street, every agent who built the case, every witness who testified against a narco‑president: all of that can be wiped away if it is politically convenient.

    At the same time, Trump continues to pour political cover and weapons into Netanyahu’s hands as Gaza is pulverised and large parts of the West Bank are terrorised. This is a government openly carrying out collective punishment, bombing densely populated civilian areas, annihilating entire families, and leaving Gaza’s hospitals, neighbourhoods and basic infrastructure in ruins. Trump stands not as a restraining voice, but as an amplifier: praising Netanyahu, indulging his maximalist rhetoric, blocking accountability, and helping ensure that the bombs keep falling.

    Christians are not spared. Ancient churches have been damaged or desecrated, Christian communities harassed and attacked, Christian clergy assaulted or intimidated as the war spills across the Holy Land. The land where Jesus walked is now a place where Christian sanctuaries are treated as expendable collateral, and Trump’s response is not outrage, not sanctions, not a hard line on war crimes, but more indulgence, more permission, more weapons – all wrapped in a cynical fusion of Christian language and political calculation that turns faith into a shield for atrocity.

    This is the man who promised “no more endless wars” and “America First.” What did his supporters get instead? A president who invites a former jihadist to the White House one day before one of the most sacred days for the U.S. military, turning solemn remembrance into a backdrop for a grotesque photo‑op. That is not restraint; that is desecration dressed up as diplomacy.

    They got a president who blesses, arms and shields a foreign leader whose campaign in Gaza and the West Bank is seen by much of the world as a live‑streamed atrocity. They got a president who outsources “war” to drones and missiles at sea, blowing up boats on suspicion, rather than formally declaring conflicts or respecting Congress. U.S. forces under Trump have repeatedly struck alleged drug boats near Venezuela and across the Caribbean, killing men whose names, faces and actual roles are still hidden from the American public. This is policy, not accident.

    This is not the end of war; it is the laundering of war. It is the transformation of war into a series of “operations,” “strikes,” and “counter‑narco missions” that avoid public debate while still killing real human beings. No body bags shown on television, just shredded bodies in the Caribbean and the eastern Mediterranean, far away from American cameras.

    “Drain the swamp” was supposed to mean confronting entrenched power: lobbyists, foreign money, corrupt politicians, the revolving door with arms manufacturers and foreign regimes. Instead, Trump has fused his White House to some of the dirtiest currents in global politics. He entertains a former jihadist leader, frees a convicted narco‑president whose crimes helped drown U.S. communities in cocaine, and embraces and arms a government accused of genocide, war crimes, and systematic persecution – including persecution of Christians.

    He then stands back as missiles slam into small boats on the high seas, killing the poor and powerless whose only crime is being on the wrong vessel with the wrong accusation attached. The message to the world is simple: presidents and generals get invitations and pardons, while fishermen, migrants and low‑level smugglers get obliterated without trial.

    How is this “draining the swamp”? The swamp has never been happier. Arms dealers profit from the weapons sent to an unrestrained Israeli war machine, and defence contractors quietly celebrate the steady flow of contracts. Foreign politicians with blood‑soaked records find forgiveness and legitimacy in Washington. Lobbyists and ideologues pushing unconditional support for the Israeli government see their agenda elevated above the lives of Palestinians, above international law, above even the safety of Christian communities in the Holy Land.

    Ask plainly: is this what MAGA expected? A president who kills nameless men in boats without trial while freeing narco capos in suits? Who dignifies a former jihadist leader while preaching toughness on terror? Who backs a foreign government as it flattens Gaza, terrorises the West Bank, and allows Christian churches and communities to be attacked? Who uses patriotic slogans and Christian language as a mask for raw realpolitik and transactional alliances with killers?

    All of it adds up to a single, obscene picture. This is not the hero of some populist epic. This is a villain who learned how to speak the language of the angry and betrayed, only to turn around and protect the powerful while crushing the weak. Every missile launched at a boat full of suspects, every tank round that lands on a crowded Gaza street, every quiet, smiling photo with a man who once ran with terrorists or cartels – all of it is a signature on a contract that says: power will be protected, and the rest of you are expendable.

    It is like declaring total war on the Medellín Cartel while still inviting Pablo Escobar to the White House, shaking his hand, and pardoning him for every crime he committed against the American people – then turning around and hunting down desperate teenagers in speedboats to prove how “tough” you are. In this upside‑down morality, power launders guilt, the presidency launders narco‑politics, and the only people who truly face the full violence of the U.S. state are the ones too poor, too foreign and too disposable ever to see the inside of the Oval Office.

    ©️2025 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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  • Cowards in Uniform: The Strategy of Hiding to Escape Justice

    Cowards in Uniform: The Strategy of Hiding to Escape Justice

    by Amal Zadok

    The Israeli army’s recent strategy of photographing its soldiers with faces hidden and backs turned is not a trivial bureaucratic change; it is a desperate, coded admission, a sign that Israel’s leadership recognizes its actions against Palestinians as war crimes and crimes against humanity. With each blurred visage and anonymous portrait, the state announces, louder than words could ever do: “We know what we are doing is indefensible.” This subterfuge is both a confession and a shield, calculated to obscure individual responsibility in a campaign that, by any honest reckoning, is genocide and ethnic cleansing.

    Authentic Israeli photo catalog
    of members of the IDF

    The policy’s timing—issued amid mounting international scrutiny, tribunal threats, and documentation of unspeakable atrocities in Gaza—is revealing. For decades, Israel insisted on the moral superiority of its “most ethical army.” Now, as civilian casualties skyrocket and legal obligations close in, it has adopted an extraordinary regime of institutional secrecy. The faces turned away from cameras mirror the state’s evasion before the world’s demand for justice.

    Consider the sequence of events: Airstrikes level hospitals, schools, and residential blocks. Water, electricity, and humanitarian access are systematically cut. Food supplies run out. Famine and disease spread among besieged Palestinians. Journalists and aid workers become deliberate targets. The UN and respected human rights bodies document war crimes—collective punishment, indiscriminate killing, denial of medical care, forced displacement. Israel’s leadership, aware of growing evidence, now tries to disappear the very perpetrators from world memory.

    Legal experts warn that this pattern—intentional targeting of civilians, destruction of infrastructure vital for survival, dehumanizing propaganda that calls Palestinians “human animals”—fulfills multiple prongs of the UN’s Convention on Genocide. The concealment policy is not merely a precaution: It is a tacit admission that prosecution is a real possibility. Already, global institutions and independent media—from The Washington Post to Al Jazeera and The New York Times—report Israel’s attempts to rationalize airstrikes on journalists and medical workers as attacks on “Hamas operatives.” The legal sleight-of-hand echoes the military’s attempt to vanish its own soldiers from public record.

    A truly “ethical” nation would champion transparency and the rule of law. Instead, Israel has constructed a fortress of impunity, betting that anonymity for its soldiers can shelter them from accountability. In reality, the world’s memory is longer than a press release. Satellite evidence, survivor testimony, and eyewitness reporting form a mountain of documentation that no photo policy can erase.

    Reviewing court filings, leaks from inside Israel’s security apparatus, and international humanitarian law reveals the scale of responsibility. Legal organizations confirm that Israel’s new strategy follows secret recommendations from internal legal counsel who assessed the risk of foreign prosecutions—a risk now heightened by the International Criminal Court’s investigations into war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.

    Israel’s defenders argue that security demands secrecy. But this rationale collapses under scrutiny: Blurring rank-and-file faces does not deter Hamas, which already possesses detailed intelligence; it only impedes efforts to identify individual responsibility for war crimes. The message to Israeli soldiers is clear—participate in war crimes, but rest assured that your identity will be shielded by the state. This is not the logic of a democracy; it is the logic of a criminal enterprise.

    The human impact is undeniable. Palestinians in Gaza describe living in a “giant concentration camp.” Children are orphaned overnight. Families are pulverized in seconds. Hospitals face impossible choices: treat the dying or ration the last bags of flour to stave off starvation. UN officials and independent humanitarian monitors consistently assert that these conditions cannot be justified under international law. Their verdict: these are crimes against humanity.

    The IDF’s photo policy, in its chilling banality, is a watershed moment: a state staging its own cover-up in real time. Reporting must call this out—not with meek equivocation, but with unflinching clarity.

    Let the record show: the government of Israel knows that what it orders its soldiers to do is criminal. Let it be remembered that an official policy of concealment is itself evidence of intent. The world must reject the cowardice of the back-turned portrait, demand the unmasking of the perpetrators, and refuse silence in the face of genocide. Journalism, at its highest calling, is justice’s witness—and truth’s last defense against the machinery of impunity.

    Yet the march of history and the reckoning of memory are unyielding. Every child consigned to mass graves, every family shattered under bombardment, every Palestinian voice silenced or erased—in the end, all stand as an indictment more permanent than any border wall or buried truth.

    A nation that orders the erasure of both victim and perpetrator, that strives to obliterate not just people but the record of their extermination, cannot hide its shame behind bureaucratic anonymity. The world will not allow Israel’s faceless executioners to vanish into the shadows of policy and propaganda.

    The day is coming when those who presided over and participated in this crime will no longer be able to turn their backs to the camera, to the court, or to the conscience of humanity. Justice, though delayed, is relentless. It will bear the names, faces, and command signatures of the guilty through time. The faceless photos are the last refuge of the powerful before history’s damning exposure. The world will remember, witness, and one day, finally, judge.

    References

    1. Reuters. (2025, January 8). Israeli military tightens media rules over war crimes prosecution concern. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-tightens-media-rules-over-war-crimes-prosecution-concern-2025-01-08/

    2. Middle East Eye. (2025, January 8). Israeli army to hide soldiers’ identities from media. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-army-set-hide-soldiers-identities-media

    3. Yahoo News Australia. (2025, November 19). Why Israeli soldiers and their leaders may be increasingly … https://au.news.yahoo.com/why-israeli-soldiers-leaders-may-043027389.html

    4. The Media Line. (2025, January 8). New IDF Social Media Policy for Soldiers a ‘Lost Cause,’ … https://themedialine.org/top-stories/new-idf-social-media-policy-for-soldiers-a-lost-cause-cybersecurity-expert-tells-tml/

    5. ABC News. (2024, April 16). IDF’s conduct, ethics under scrutiny following soldiers’ social media posts. https://abcnews.go.com/International/idfs-conduct-ethics-scrutiny-soldiers-social-media-posts/story?id=109035616

    6. The New York Times. (2025, August 21). He Was the Face and Voice of Gaza. Israel Assassinated … https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/opinion/israel-al-sharif-killing-gaza.html

    7. Washington Post. (n.d.). Finalist: Staff of The Washington Post. https://www.pulitzer.org/node/staff-washington-post-38

    8. Maghrebi.org. (2024, May 8). Pulitzer Prizes honour journalists’ coverage of Israel-Gaza war. https://maghrebi.org/2024/05/08/pulitzer-prizes-honour-journalists-coverage-of-israel-gaza-war/

    9. Al Jazeera. (2023, June 7). Israeli troops hit with social media ban. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2013/6/7/israeli-troops-hit-with-social-media-ban

    10. BBC News. (2013, March 1). Israeli army ire over social media posts. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-21627500

    11. World Records Journal. (2022, July 27). How the IDF Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Video Activism. https://worldrecordsjournal.org/spectacle-as-camouflage-how-the-idf-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-video-activism/

    12. FPA. (2025, February 9). Photo Exposes More About Israel Than Its Subjects. https://fpa.org/photo-exposes-israel-subjects/

    13. OHCHR. (2024, October 9). UN Commission finds war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israeli attacks. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/10/un-commission-finds-war-crimes-and-crimes-against-humanity-israeli-attacks

    14. Human Rights Watch. (2024, November 14). Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza. https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/14/israels-crimes-against-humanity-gaza

    15. Amnesty International. (2025, October 1). Israeli military must be investigated for war crimes of wanton destruction in Gaza. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/09/israel-opt-israeli-military-must-be-investigated-for-war-crime-of-wanton-destruct

    ©️2025 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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  • Trump’s Moral Bankruptcy: From Enabling Genocide in Gaza to Embracing Terror in the White House

    Trump’s Moral Bankruptcy: From Enabling Genocide in Gaza to Embracing Terror in the White House

    by Amal Zadok

    History will judge leaders not by their slogans, but by their actions in the face of suffering and evil. No figure in modern American politics demonstrates a collapse of principle so complete, so reckless, as Donald Trump does today. His legacy, once packaged as “America First,” now stands drenched in the blood of Gaza’s innocents and stained by the shameful embrace of one of the world’s most notorious terrorists—Ahmad al-Shara, formerly known as al-Jolani. A man once hunted internationally, with a $10 million bounty on his head for orchestrating massacres and beheadings, is now shaking hands with the president on White House grounds.

    This is not a mere misstep; it is a rupture with the very notion of civilization. The world expected leadership from America—and received, instead, the shrugging endorsement of genocide in Gaza. Trump’s administration has issued relentless backing for siege, starvation, and systematic destruction unprecedented in this generation. Not only have international law and human decency been trampled, but America’s moral standing now lies buried beneath the rubble of Palestinian homes.

    Could it be any clearer? The biblical prophets condemned those who “call evil good and good evil.” Trump does precisely this: blessing violence, turning victims into villains, excusing butchery as “toughness.” When he hosts Ahmad al-Shara—who terrorized both Christians and Muslims, who transformed Syrian towns into graveyards under the banner of Jihad—he desecrates the memory of every Christian martyred for their faith, and every Muslim slaughtered for resisting extremism. Only a soul lost in power’s delirium could boast of new “coalitions” with a man who, not long ago, inspired fear throughout the Middle East and drew global condemnation.

    Trump now presents this coalition as a “strategic necessity,” dismissing all criticism as “weakness” or “leftist hysteria.” Let us be perfectly clear: this is not strategy. This is appeasement, a transaction in blood, a gamble that America can harness evil as a tool. It is a bitter lesson history has taught before—every time, with catastrophic results. Yes, desperate voices within MAGA ranks scramble to defend Trump’s logic, clinging to the mirage that partnering with monsters will somehow deliver peace or “stability.” But no American who cherishes faith, principle, or basic decency can look at these decisions and feel anything but shame.

    Even now, as the images of Gaza’s ruins sear themselves into the world’s conscience, and survivors recount the horror of children starved and schools bombed, Trump and his circle dodge accountability. They invoke “national security” to justify the unthinkable. When confronted with al-Shara’s bloody résumé, Trump’s response is to boast: “We bring everyone to the table.” That table, today, stands set with the ghosts of Christian pastors executed by jihadists and Muslim villagers erased for daring to resist.

    Let’s not hide from the truth: this betrayal will shatter Trump’s MAGA base. Evangelical, Catholics and conservatives with a conscience know that justice and truth—foundational to both American and Christian identity—cannot coexist with the fellowship of murderers. The rank hypocrisy is too obvious, the dissonance too violent. Already, fractures run through the movement, as faith leaders and anti-war veterans recoil at images of slaughter in Gaza and the spectacle of a warlord welcomed in Washington.

    For decades, America’s allure, battered but real, derived from its capacity for moral outrage—its ability to say “no” to evil, whoever wore its face. Under Trump, that light flickers. The man who once posed as a bulwark against America’s enemies now kneels before them, trading honor for spectacle. The world is watching, and history will not forget. Gaza bleeds. Christians and Muslims mark their martyrs. America, in Trump’s shadow, wonders what more it will lose before it rediscovers its soul.

    There is no redemption in this chapter of America’s story—only betrayal. Trump has not merely abandoned the obligations of leadership; he has shattered the values he once proclaimed, the ideals upon which the Republic was built.

    The man who thundered slogans about freedom, justice, and strength now tears those words apart, choosing instead to embrace murderers and turn his back on the suffering of innocents.

    The Patriot is dead, smothered beneath vanity and cowardice. In his place stands a compromised, hollow leader—a twisted echo of what this Republic needs in its hour of greatest peril.

    America stands diminished, its flag tattered—not by foreign powers, but by the failures of the very man sworn to defend her. The Republic cannot endure treachery and weakness dressed in the garb of authority. It deserves more. It demands the rebirth of honour, the rejection of cruelty, and the triumph of real leadership before everything this nation stands for is lost forever.

    References

    1. BBC News. (2021). Abu Mohammed al-Jolani: The jihadist who turned to the West. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57656543

    2. Reuters. (2020). The U.S. and the Syrian Resistance: Inside America’s Secret Effort to Arm the Rebels. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/syria-usa/

    3. NBC News. (2025). Syrian interim president Ahmad al-Shara expected to join U.S.-led coalition against ISIS. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/syrian-interim-president-expected-join-us-coalition-isis

    4. The Guardian. (2023). Trump’s response to the Gaza crisis: Applause for force, silence for suffering. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/trump-response-gaza-crisis

    5. U.S. State Department. (2021). $10 Million Reward for Information on Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. https://rewardsforjustice.net/english/julani.html

    6. Human Rights Watch. (2023). Gaza: Starvation and siege. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/30/gaza-starvation-siege

    7. CNN. (2025). Trump faces backlash after inviting former jihadist leader to White House. https://www.cnn.com/politics/trump-white-house-syria-backlash

    ©️2025 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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