Beach-side Genocide in Gaza, USA

This week: Trump calls for U.S. to rule Gaza; UNRWA is banned; Israel and U.S. exit from UN Human Rights council; Trump's tariff war falls flat; the Department of Education is in Trump's sights.

(credit: White House)

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We are now in week three of Trump’s nascent administration, and yet he continues to flood the zone and dominate the airwaves with increasingly intense, illegal, or perplexing executive actions at an unrelenting frequency. Here are some of the most notable stories to emerge out of earlier this week.

Israel and U.S. Exit U.N. Human Rights Council

Israel Escalates Attacks on West Bank’s Jenin, Leveling Buildings and Killing the Elderly

Republican Congressman Introduces Bill to Destroy Workplace Safety Agency

Nine Global South Nations Form “the Hague Group” to Uphold ICC and ICJ Rulings Against Israel

Trump Pledges, Then Partially Rescinds Tariff War

Under the pretense of combatting illegal immigration and drug trade, Trump threatened our neighbors with tariffs that were set to go into effect on Tuesday. The tariffs would’ve applied a 25% tax on imports from Canada and Mexico, while Canadian energy products would only be subject to a 10% tariff. To be clear, the cost of these tariffs would be passed onto American citizens, not the countries they are targeting, with the intent being to compel people and corporations away from doing business with entities operating in these targeted countries, having a potentially crippling effect on these targets in the long term.

However, in the face of retaliatory tit-for-tat responses from these nations, Trump quickly “struck a deal” with our neighbors. Canada is pledging $1.3 billion to strengthen its border, while Mexico is promising to send 10,000 troops from its national guard to its border. While Trump is trying to frame these concessions as wins with the American public, Canada had actually announced its border strengthening plan months ago, and Mexico flexibly sends troops in the tens of thousands to and from its border on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, Trump’s 10% tariff imposition on China is in full swing, and China is responding in kind with tariffs on various U.S. imports. The tariffs are bound to have significant effects on larger firms, but what’s not clear is how crippling they may be for smaller entities and sellers due to de minimis exemptions on smaller imports seemingly being axed.

Trump is Preparing to Kill Department of Education

The Trump administration is preparing to direct the secretary of Education to create a plan to dismantle the Department of Education. This is yet another chapter in a long-running quest the right has been on to privatize education and limit its accessibility, or as Ronald Reagan’s education advisor put it when he was governor of California, to limit the “danger of producing an educated proletariat”.

UNRWA Continues Operating Despite Israeli Ban

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) is continuing to operate in the region, in spite of a legal ban from Israel predicated on flaky allegations suggesting that some of their officials participated in Hamas’s incursion on October 7th, 2023. UNRWA is one of the largest health, education, and emergency response providers in the Gaza strip. The agency is largely to credit for a spike in Palestinian literacy over time. The government of Israel largely sees a well-educated Palestinian population as a potential threat to their sovereignty.

At a Meeting with Netanyahu, Trump Calls for U.S. To Take Control of Gaza, Suggests that Half a Million Gazans Have Been Killed

At a meeting with Netanyahu, Trump doubled-down on and reiterated his previous calls to fully vacate the Gaza strip. He outlined a vision which included U.S. sovereignty over the strip and callously fantasized about Gaza’s beach-side potential, statements which echoed prior comments from his son-in-law expressing a desire to develop beach-front property in Gaza. As with many of Trump’s prior vapid designs that came to naught, I’d take this with a grain of salt.

During conversations and appearances related to the matter, Trump continuously reiterated that a population of around 1.7 to 1.8 million Gazans would need to be expunged, suggesting that this previously unreported number came to him as official guidance. Official counts were closer to 2.3 million prior to Israel’s campaign that began in October 2023, and most residents were unable to leave, suggesting that the strip’s official death count reported inside the U.S. government may be close to half a million people.

The despot and wanted criminal Netanyahu left Trump a parting gift in the form of a golden pager affixed to a stump, a callous callback to Israel’s terrorist attack on Lebanon, in which pagers acquired by Hezbollah and intercepted and bugged by Israel detonated spontaneously, killing and injuring civilians in the process. Hopefully for Trump, this one is non-explosive.