In the Oval Office at the White House, a reporter asked U.S. President Joe Biden if he thought he could cut a “hostage deal” by the end of his term, to which he replied: “Do you think you can get hit in the head by the camera behind you?” This happened on the day when Biden met Israeli President Isaac Herzog, as we learn from the former’s recent video statement where he reaffirms, once again, his “ironclad” commitment to Israel.
His party’s election loss, which eliminates any fear of political risk he might have previously had, seems not to bother him, nor to grant him the “freedom” to finally be honest. Or, perhaps, he has always been free, yet chose his side in history precisely as a result of his “freedom” where freedom is understood as that thing that is always espoused and tirelessly advocated for by the Western political class. It is that freedom that the U.S. is known for spreading across the world.
Despite his warm embrace of “freedom,” however, Biden failed to satisfy the demands of the empire whose expectations from the president concerning Israel’s shameless wishes have been unusually high. In the same video statement, Herzog appears to be delivering almost a kind of termination notice, in the fashion of an HR representative, telling Biden that he has been “an incredible friend of Israel and the Jewish people for decades, and (they) will never forget, ever in history, how (he) stood up with (them) in (their) darkest hour.” They shake hands, and the video ends there – but, of course, one imagines that Herzog remains in the room to wait for the new employee, the new President-elect Donald Trump, to arrive, and later to remind him of the requirements of the role.
The requirements of the role are not too complicated. The masters of mankind, as Noam Chomsky calls them, do not like complications after all. They simply seek loyalty to the “cause” of absolute U.S. hegemony. In their worldview, Israel is not a stain on the fabric of the U.S.; far from it, it represents the true face of the empire. And any prospective U.S. president must share, sometimes in stronger terms, this same worldview. Trump’s appointments to his new administration thus far confirm this thesis.
It is certainly worth noting that Trump’s second-ever appointment to his upcoming administration was Elise Stefanik. As the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Stefanik has been known for her vicious attacks on university presidents for their failure to suppress college protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Now, on her watch, everyone can rest assured that the empire will keep voting against U.N. resolutions overwhelmingly backed by the rest of the world. It is possible that Stefanik will even surpass in her tenacity the incumbent Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who tweeted last month that U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, whose battle with the genocidaires has been truly remarkable, was “unfit for her role” – accusing her, as usual, of anti-Semitism.
Trump’s third appointment was Mike Huckabee, who refuses to use the words “West Bank” and opts instead for “Judea and Samaria” as Likudniks do, to the highly prioritized position of the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee fits seamlessly in a prospective U.S. administration, for U.S. relations with Israel are only second to U.S. relations with the world at large, as we know.
This is further evidenced, for instance, by the fact that John Thune, who recently became the majority leader in the U.S. Senate, made his first phone call upon his election to none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reaffirming his commitment to Israel – a procedure that seems to be followed without exemption by anyone who can ever dream of holding high office in the U.S. government.
Huckabee’s strong preference for using Biblical terms such as “Promised Land,” which he describes as “important to (him),” could only be matched by the unadulterated fanaticism of Trump’s fourth and fifth picks for his administration. As his national security advisor, Trump chose Mike Waltz, who had displayed frustration at the current administration’s earlier stunt about a possible arms delay to Israel.
And the readers will remember, Trump’s fifth appointment, Kristi Noem as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, from when she passed a bill, in the midst of the genocide in Gaza no less, titled “Ensuring the Security of God’s Chosen People,” which was supposedly designed to “combat anti-Semitism,” which she claimed “we see … on college campuses.”
Trump’s choice for his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, is yet another passionate supporter of Israel’s “crusade” against the people of Palestine. The author of the book “American Crusade,” Hegseth once called for “the reestablishment of the temple on the Temple Mount,” effectively expressing his wish for the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, the third-holiest site in Islam. Interestingly, he had made this call at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where, in 1946, many people including British diplomats and military personnel were killed in a terrorist attack by the militia group Irgun – the predecessor of Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Considering British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s complete subservience to the U.S.-Israeli alliance, it may be suggested that the British have indeed been defeated by Irgun.
These appointments confirm what everyone was expecting from a second Trump presidency. Surely, no right-minded person had pinned their hopes on a change in U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine, and the Palestinian people, in particular, harbored no such illusions. What happens now, then? With no hope in sight for justice in Palestine, are we to accept this bleak picture and carry on with our daily lives? Can we not still hope that at least some world leaders, with the imperative of what is left of their conscience, will decide to resist the absolute hegemony of the empire and try to hold Israel accountable for its crimes?