On genocide, Trump will be no different from Biden

If a Pulitzer Prize was handed retired for the (unintentionally) funniest, stitch-inducing header drafted by a “major” quality organisation successful 2024, past The New York Times – which craves specified frivolous baubles – would triumph it without question.

Here’s the “award-winning” headline, published past week successful the aftermath of US President-elect Donald Trump’s diplomatic selections that, according to the Times, volition “help signifier President-elect Trump’s strategy” connected the Middle East.

“Trump’s Middle East Picks Signal Staunch Pro-Israel Policy,” the Times wrote.

It is conscionable truthful comical, isn’t it?

An identical header could person been recycled verbatim aft each Democrat oregon Republican president-elect made nationalist his “Middle East picks” since Israel’s engineered inception successful 1948.

My goodness.

The headline’s implicit proposition is that, somehow, for immoderate puzzling reason, determination whitethorn person been a scintilla of uncertainty that Trump was not going to follow a “Staunch Pro-Israel Policy” similar each his deferential predecessors.

Sure, Trump played nicey-nicey with a clump of gullible Arab “leaders” (pawns) successful swing-state Michigan during the statesmanlike predetermination run to curry fleeting favour with a “community” helium would instantly wantonness erstwhile helium scored 270 electoral votes.

The headline’s 2nd underlying inference is that immoderate US president-elect – Democrat oregon Republican – would consider, fto unsocial beryllium susceptible of, embracing thing different than a “Staunch Pro-Israel Policy”.

Finally, and possibly astir absurdly, successful its ongoing and signature efforts to normalise a fascist president-elect, the Times’s uproarious header and sub-headline connote that Trump, who volition soon inhabit the Oval Office for a 2nd time, has a nuanced knowing of the Middle East that volition construe into a well-defined “policy” and “strategy” for the region.

My goodness – the sequel.

This whitethorn beryllium a revelation to the Times, but I don’t deliberation that Trump tin even distinguish betwixt Iran and Iraq connected a map.

But, arsenic we know, a nuanced knowing of the Middle East is not needfully a prerequisite successful the White House oregon the State Department, erstwhile it comes to electing oregon appointing radical to instrumentality carriage of America’s “policy” oregon “strategy” for that troubled portion of the world.

Do the discredited names George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and the precocious Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell outpouring to anyone’s caput – peculiarly astatine the complicit New York Times?

Lest we forget.

Predictably, Joe Biden and Antony Blinken followed the “shock and awe” gang’s ruinous footprints by giving the indicted premier curate of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, each the money, arms, and “strategic” screen helium required to perpetrate genocide successful Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Biden, Blinken and United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield person pursued the aforesaid “kill first, deliberation later” “policy” oregon “strategy” – instrumentality your prime – that the “shock and awe” pack employed with specified disastrous and inhumane consequences.

You would person reasonably thought that the calamitous penetration of Iraq would person fixed Biden, Blinken and Thomas-Greenfield pause.

You would beryllium wrong.

Instead, existent to “kill first, deliberation later” form, Biden, Blinken and Thomas-Greenfield person enabled a genocide – that has already claimed the lives of much than 43,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women – with the patina of faux seriousness that Trump and halting institution deficiency and that is truthful valued by the learned cognoscenti astatine the Times, CNN and MSNBC.

So, wherefore anyone, anywhere, would beryllium “shocked” that Trump has chosen an evangelical Christian and wannabe rampaging Israeli settler, Mike Huckabee, to beryllium America’s adjacent ambassador to Israel is simply a silly enigma to me.

Why anyone, anyplace would beryllium “shocked” that pro-Israel zealots similar Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Elise Stefanik would beryllium appointed caput of authorities and UN ambassador respectively is besides a silly enigma to me.

Like Biden, Blinken, and Thomas-Greenfield, Trump, Rubio, Huckabee and Stefanik judge that Israel enjoys the absolute, uncontested “right to support itself”. If that means the erasure of Gaza and the West Bank, past truthful beryllium it — decency, quality and civilian rights conventions, and planetary instrumentality beryllium damned.

Beyond the rhetorical edges astir a mythical “two-state solution”, determination is nary “daylight” betwixt Biden, Blinken, and Thomas-Greenfield and Trump, Rubio, Huckabee and Stefanik concerning the “future” of the Palestinians successful Gaza and the West Bank.

They person nary “future”.

Biden, Blinken, and Thomas-Greenfield person permitted Israel to bash to Gaza and the West Bank what Trump, Rubio, Huckabee and Stefanik person agelong hoped to bash to Gaza and the West Bank – crook what remains of Palestinian onshore into particulate and representation by, if request be, lethal and indiscriminate force.

Trump, Rubio, Huckabee and Stefanik correspond the somewhat much blunt and profane continuum of America’s defining “kill first, deliberation later” cognition towards the Middle East.

That is wherefore Democrats’ and the cognoscenti’s fuming “outrage” implicit Trump’s “scandalous” furniture and different high-profile medication choices has been mostly reserved – surprise, astonishment – for his “controversial” picks for lawyer wide and defence secretary.

The methodical, much than yearlong demolition of Gaza and the West Bank is stale news.

Biden, Blinken and Thomas-Greenfield gave Israel the “green light” to termination arsenic galore Palestinians arsenic it wants to for arsenic agelong arsenic it wants to and Trump, Rubio, Huckabee and Stefanik volition bash precisely the same.

On genocide: the caller White House pack is the aforesaid arsenic the aged White House gang.

Hold on. There’s inactive hope. The Arab leaders (pawns) who met with Trump towards the extremity of the run – successful rebuff of Kamala Harris – have sent him a missive asking the president-elect “to use [his] governmental power successful demanding an contiguous ceasefire successful Lebanon and Palestine” with a presumption towards negotiating “a lasting peace”.

Of course, a missive – assuming Trump bothers to work it – is bound to alteration Washington’s ingrained presumption that Palestinians are ever the perpetrators and ne'er the victims, and that their lives are arsenic disposable arsenic they are inconsequential.

Yes, a pretty-please-worded missive should yet bash the elusive trick.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.