The Trump Cease Fire?

Kim Iversen is a valuable podcaster. She is one of the rarest of modern journalists in that she is intelligent, honest, objective, and well informed. She ran a recent program in which she credited --not Joe Biden--but Donald Trump with the recent cease fire in the Middle East. She played a tape where Trump proclaimed that if the war was not settled by the time he entered office there would be hell to pay. She then showed how Trump had linked to a video on his platform Truth Social featuring Jeff Sachs. In that particular segment Sachs was proclaiming two truthful but unpopular statements.

First, that President Obama had approved a CIA program to overthrow the government of Syria, and that the NY Times was quite reluctant to report on it. In fact, in about ten years they had reported it three times. Second, that one of the people encouraging the USA to go to war in Iraq was President Netanyahu of Israel. And he did so because his idea of dispensing with Hamas and Hezbollah was toppling the governments of Iraq, Syria and Iran, which supported them. In that segment Sachs called Netanyahu a “deep, dark, sonofabitch”. And he blamed him for advocating for endless wars in the Middle East. She also quoted a report saying that it was really Trump’s new Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, who had made Netanyahu accept the cease fire terms. Finally, she stated that Trump had not invited Netanyahu to his inauguration. (See show of January 14, 2025)

The cease fire will tentatively consist of an exchange of civilian hostages and prisoners on each side, a return of captured Israeli soldiers, a removal of Israeli troops from Gaza, a plan for a rebuild of Gaza and then finally an agreement on how the area will be governed. (ibid). The above seems to be a rather simple equation that should not have been difficult to deduce. So the question then becomes: Why could Biden and his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, not achieve it on their own?

One expert on the subject, Professor Stephen Walt has stated that, “The Biden administration decided to be all in and merely pretended it was trying to do something about it.” (Brett Murphy at Scheerpost, 1/16/25). Professor Walt then dismissed the warnings Biden had given to Israel as something of a smokescreen.

One example would be warnings given by Biden to Israel about attacking the city of Rafah. Rafah had been a safe haven for tens of thousands of Palestinians forced from their homes in the north of Gaza at the start of the war. When the White House learned that Netanyahu planned on invading the city, Biden warned of an offensive arms embargo if he did so. Israel invaded Rafah in May. They rolled tanks into the city and dropped bombs on targets, including a refugee camp, killing many civilians. What was the president’s response to this clear violation of the Geneva strictures on warfare? Biden responded to this brutality by pausing a shipment of 2,000 pound bombs, but letting everything else through. (ibid, see also NY Times report of 6/14/24)

The strike on Rafah caused the International Court of Justice to order Israel to halt its attack on the city. As noted above, they based this on a violation of the universally acknowledged Geneva conventions for warfare. What did Biden’s and Blinken’s State Department do in respsonse? They devised a scheme to work around the court by using more accurately targeted strikes and allowing more humanitarian aid into the area. As one commentator noted, the State Department employs a whole regiment of lawyers to explain how something that is illegal actually is not. (ibid, Scheerpost)

After this, several State Department officials said Blinken should at least state the importance of the court and express concern over the civilian casualties in Rafah. Blinken’s spokesman Matt Miller nixed any recognition of the ruling. When this happened, many people in State came to the conclusion that they were now passengers in the back seat of the limo. It was really Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor, who was running things in this war. In fact, the State Department was given a list of what were labeled forbidden words and phrases not to use in public discussions of the matter. For example the phrase “Palestinian residents of Jerusalem” was not allowed. One had to say “non-Israeli residents of Jerusalem.”.

As these kinds of wars usually do, Blinken had to admit something rather unpleasant about the results. Namely that Hamas has gained as many new members as it has lost amid the Israeli invasion of Gaza. On January 14^th in a speech at the Atlantic Council, Blinken made this rather startling proclamation. Yet, one of the main goals that was announced as the reason for the Gaza attack was to eliminate Hamas. But yet, since Hamas was organized as a resistance to Israeli occupation of Palestine, this would make it a very elusive goal if the area was under attack. In fact, experts on the subject, like Jean Mearsheimer, have stated that this goal would not be achieved.

It has been this tactical failure that has led many to think that the real goal of the invasion has been the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. During the 15 month assault Israel has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, and roughly 18,000 have been children. And this does not include missing persons or those who have perished due to Israel’s policy of starvation and the inevitable advancement of diseases. (Truthout, 1/14/25, article by Sharon Zhang)

Backing up Professor Walt on the true American policy there was the American ambassador to Israel Jack Lew. He said that the USA has tried to avoid any real critique of Israeli policy or its military objectives: “Fundamentally, nothing that we ever said was just stop the war.” Which backs up Kim Iversen’s thesis about Trump. Lew then made this declaration:

I don’t think you’ve heard the secretary or President Biden or Jake Sullivan ever back away from the proposition that Israel had a right and responsibility to prosecute the war, that eliminating Hamas as a military and a governing force is a shared objective, and that the narrative can’t begin on October 8^th. (ibid)

That last date is of course is the day after Hamas made its initial attack into Israel in 2023. But if the elimination of Hamas was not achieved, or even come close to being achieved, what was the point of bombing refugees in Rafah? And why was American aid never even seriously curtailed in the face of all these atrocities? The total sum given was over 24 billion to conduct this war on Gaza.

And let us not forget the Leahy Law. That rule was written by Senator Patrick Leahy. It was caused by the brutality of Central American security forces being backed up by American money who wreaked havoc on civilian populations, the foremost example being the El Mozote Massacre. To Leahy this was violating America’s basic principles, as we were complicit in these violations. The law was designed to halt aid to any miliary units involved in a gross violation of human rights.

In an important Washington Post article of May 20, 2024—2 weeks after the attack on Rafah--Leahy said that his law should be enforced equally in all countries given US military aid. Unfortunately, it has not been and he then mentioned Israel as a glaring exception. Leahy explained that he has written to successive secretaries of state about this failure. He had not gotten any satisfactory response. He then added that since his law was passed in 1997, not a single Israeli security unit has been denied American aid. This in the face of a visible pattern of Israel failing to punish soldiers involved in human rights violations. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu “pledged to thwart any U.S. attempt to implement the Leahy Law.”

So Israel is not just allowed to violate international law, but also American law in regards to those governing American military aid. And we also allow Netanyahu to openly defy the stricture. Can a superpower be any more groveling before Zionist political influence in America than that? And this is not just certain journalists—including myself talking—it was also employees in Biden’s government who were genuinely disturbed about his double standard toward Israel.

Hala Rharrit worked for the State Department in human rights and counterterrorism. When the war broke out her job was to monitor the Arab press and social media to report on how the war was received in the Middle East. Her reports, which included pictures and tapes, showed just how atrocious the crimes being committed were. She even included photos of children starving. She was berated for this and her work was censored. (CBS News, 1/12/25, report by Cecilia Vega.) Three months into the war, she was told her reports were not needed any longer. She resigned her position.

With Biden becoming the first American president to visit Israel in time of war, her resignation was pretty much preordained. And, in fact, there was another State Department resignation, this by a man named Josh Paul. He decided to quit when he saw that there was no review of any single request for arms that Israel made. Not one. In fact, not only was there never any review, these orders were expedited with time stamps. Paul and others were particularly disturbed by the indiscriminate use of 2000 pound bombs which were originally designed to break apart large weapons depots. These were now being used on Hamas tunnels, except that dozens of women and children were being killed in the process. (ibid)

In addition to international law, and the Leahy Law, there is also an American stricture prohibiting miliary aid being given to nations that restrict American humanitarian help like food and medicine. There is little or no doubt that Israel was in violation of this law, as they were warned about it. But again, the warning had no teeth. (CBS News, story of 10/15 24)

The most visible and harsh disagreement in the press over Biden’s one sided policy in the Middle East occurred when Blinken held a farewell press conference on January 15^th. Sam Husseini works at the Insitute for Public Accuracy and has written for The Nation and Salon. He had to be forcibly removed from the room by six security guards. Max Blumenthal has written for the New York and Los Angeles Times and is editor of the Grayzone website. He was escorted out of the conference. Blumenthal complained that the arrangement now in process could have been achieved months earlier, in May of 2024 to be exact. The implication being that Biden and Blinken were willing to accommodate Israel’s hidden agenda.

But perhaps the most disquieting revelation in all this has been made by former Senator Mitt Romney. He has stated that the support for a nationwide ban on the Tik Tok platform is connected to the huge amount of mentions there about the Palestinians. Romney stated this was especially true in relative comparison to other social media sites. (Axios, story by Erin Alberty, 5/6/24)

Does this make Donald Trump some kind of admirable figure on this issue or someone to look forward to as president? Nope. Anyone who takes 100 million from the likes of Zionist Miriam Adelson is not going to reject any and all pleas from that quarter.

As Consortium News reported recently, on his first day in office, Trump lifted all sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank. This provoked an almost immediate series of ugly attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the area. The terror attacks were done by masked settlers who set fires and shot indiscriminately. Israeli soldiers then used tear gas against fleeing villagers. Twenty one people were injured. Israel then imposed a lockdown and began a military assault on the Jenin Refugee Camp. There is very little doubt that Trump’s presidency will be much in favor of these settler groups. For example, his ambassador to the UN, Elise Stefanik declared that Israel has a “biblical right” to the entirety of the occupied West Bank. And Adelson has advocated for Israel to directly annex the West Bank. But beyond that, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has a foundation that has funneled cash to the West Bank settlement of Beit El. (Story by Robert Inlakesh of 1/24/25)

Recall, this is the president who greeted Governor Gavin Newsom of California with a demand that if he wanted federal aid for the several wildfires that have killed 28 people and burned thousands of homes, he needed to pass voter ID laws. Does anyone recall any of these kinds of Republican demands in the wake of Katrina?