Ann Arbor – Donald Trump telephoned in to “Fox and Friends” on Tuesday, March 5, breaking his long silence on Israel’s campaign against Gaza. So reports Sanjana Karanth at HuffPost.
One host, Brian Kilmeade, asked Trump, “Are you on board with the way the IDF is taking the fight to Gaza — in Gaza?”
Trump replied,
“You’ve got to finish the problem. You had a horrible invasion that took place, that would have never happened if I was president, by the way. As you know, Iran was broke, Brian, they were broke. They had no money for Hamas, for Hezbollah — they were broke. This would have never happened — and for another reason, they wouldn’t have done it to me. I guarantee you that. They did this because they have no respect for Biden. And frankly they got soft. And what happened here is incredible. That — it should never have happened. Likewise, Russia would never have attacked Ukraine.”
Vaughn Hillyard and Allan Smith at NBC called up the Trump campaign for further comment. They report that Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, said:
“President Trump did more for Israel than any American President in history, and he took historic action in the Middle East that created unprecedented peace … When President Trump is back in the Oval Office, Israel will once again be protected, Iran will go back to being broke, terrorists will be hunted down, and the bloodshed will end.”
NBC recalls that Trump had said last October, that he would “fully support Israel defeating, dismantling, and permanently destroying the terrorist group Hamas.”
What is striking is that Trump’s position on Gaza is not any different from that of Joe Biden. Barak Ravid at Axios reports that Israeli politician Benny Gantz, a member of the current war cabinet, came to Washington on March 4. He wasn’t told there must be an immediate ceasefire. He wasn’t told that Hamas can’t be destroyed with Israel’s current tactics. The White House officials pleaded with him to let more food and aid in to Gaza and to establish means of distributing it safely. Vice President Kamala Harris and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told Gantz he can’t invade Rafah without evacuating 1.4 million Palestinian civilians first, and expressed skepticism that it could be done. But they didn’t say he couldn’t invade Rafah, and they didn’t object to ethnically cleansing a million and a half people for a second time in order to enable this military operation. They also never threatened to cut off transfers of ammunition and military equipment to Israel’s war effort, which Biden could do with a single phone call.
Both Trump and Biden, along with Antony Blinken, however, agree with the goal of Israel “defeating, dismantling, and permanently destroying the terrorist group Hamas.” That is why the US keeps vetoing UNSC ceasefire resolutions and makes sure that the Israeli officials operate with impunity.
That this goal seems plausible to the Washington Blob explains why US officials are comfortable with the Israeli total war on Gaza. They may wish that fewer than 30,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, could have been killed in the pursuit of that goal. They may wish that the fascist government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had been more circumspect and less openly brutal in its tactics and less of an embarrassment to the US. But they believe that “you can’t make omelettes without breaking some eggs.”
When Hilary Clinton, who shares the Blob mindset, was asked in February if she was shocked by the high civilian casualties in Gaza, she replied, “Of course I’m not shocked, because that’s what happens in war.”
Actually, if US soldiers did the things to civilian noncombatants that Israeli soldiers are doing in Gaza, they would be court-martialed. Airman Aaron Bushnell committed suicide over the shame of the US military being complicit in these war crimes. Veterans have burned their uniforms in protest, and active duty personnel are circulating anonymous letters of protest. Ms. Clinton once remarked of Vladimir Putin that “he doesn’t have a soul, he is KGB.” But it turns out it takes one to know one.
Meanwhile half of American adults believe Israel has gone too far in Gaza, which means half of Americans have more common sense than either Trump or Biden.
As for Trump, as usual nothing he said was true. Iran was not behind the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and in fact was entirely taken by surprise, according to a CIA assessment. For this reason, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Hamas official Ismail Haniya that Iran would not intervene militarily on the side of Hamas in the current conflict.
Iran is still broke, since the Biden administration has kept Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran intact. This policy is unwise, since it pushed Iran into the arms of Russia, which gained a strategic asset in its struggle against Ukraine, and because being on a permanent war footing with another country can easily spiral into a shooting war. Iran got around Trump by smuggling oil to China, and it is getting around Biden the same way.
As for destroying a clan-based resistance movement like Hamas by brutalizing the civilian population within which it operates, that was also the US plan for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, “Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires” and “Engaging the Muslim World.” He blogs at juancole.com, follow him at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page. See the original, linked column at https://www.juancole.com/2024/03/supports-israeli-campaign.html
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2024
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