Middle East Press On: Trump's 'Mar-a-Gaza', Ethnic Cleansing, Israel’s Attack, Netanyahu’s Arrogance, and American Genetics: New Age Islam's Selection, 12 February 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
12 February 2025
1. Trump's 'Mar-a-Gaza' plan breaks academia's two-state dogma
2. Ethnic cleansing of Gaza and American genetics
3. Israel’s attack on literature should not be normalised
4. Will Trump let hell break out in Gaza?
5. Netanyahu’s arrogance pushing region to the precipice
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Trump's 'Mar-A-Gaza' Plan Breaks Academia's Two-State Dogma
By Sabrina Soffer
February 12, 2025
Imagine if a university professor had hinted at the possibility of the US owning Gaza before US President Donald Trump’s proposal. It wouldn’t be surprising for a professor to present this idea as a perpetuation and demonstration of American and Zionist colonialism, racism, and genocide, or for students to immediately reject it, affirming their perceptions.
But a professor genuinely engaging with this idea would have been unlikely before Trump shocked the world with his unprecedented, crazy proposal. Why? Precisely because it was crazy and unprecedented, overly controversial, and could have “offended” ideological and overly sensitive students given the implications.
As non-politically correct as Trump’s rhetoric can be, only he could have made this proposal. Regardless of feelings, the fact is that this is a defining moment in history.
After “Mar-a-Gaza” made global headlines and memes overtook social media platforms, an alternative to the two-state solution inevitably entered the academic fold.
A George Washington University (GW) peer shared that the day following the Trump-Netanyahu press conference, her professor opened the floor for student opinions. Mar-a-Gaza became the center of attention and, expectedly, condemnation.
Having endured fifteen minutes of anti-Trumpian and anti-Israel criticism, the student raised her hand and attempted to offer a more balanced perspective. She detailed the October 7 attacks, the history of the 2005 Gaza disengagement, and more.
“Let’s move on to a different topic now, shall we?” the professor said, quickly shutting down any substantial, balanced discussion of Trump’s plan.
It should now be clear why I mentioned that discussing a theoretical Mar-a-Gaza plan would have been unlikely in a university classroom prior to Trump’s unveiling.
The academy, it seems, has been taken over by meitzarim, Hebrew for “limitations.” These limitations are precisely the ideological shackles President Trump seeks to break with his Mar-a-Gaza proposal. Maybe he’s serious, maybe he isn’t. Maybe it’s just another stab at the art of the deal.
Last week’s Torah portion, Parshat Beshalach recounts the early stages of the Exodus, where we learn that just as Mitzrayim (Egypt) physically constrained the Jewish people, these physical limitations created a mentality of meitzarim – one that binds us to certain ideas. For the Jews to have faith in the divine parting of the sea, they first needed to experience the physical freedom that would allow them to have such faith.
This biblical story is metaphorical for limitations imposed on thinking, particularly ideas considered taboo, controversial, or offensive. Other ideas, however – like global communism or the “From the river to the sea” ideology – are freely disseminated and have been accepted in numerous academic circles.
When politics and ideology shape our boundaries, we risk adopting idealistic and impractical perspectives amid demonizing opposing views. This mirrors Mitzrayim, where the Jews would never have believed that they could escape and where the Egyptians could have convinced them they would remain enslaved forever.
TODAY, THE academy is imposing meitzarim on our generation by failing to educate students on global realities and by restricting the exploration of alternative solutions, notably in the Middle Eastern context. Many students in the West enter university slightly opinionated but mostly unaware of all the nuances of Middle Eastern dynamics.
Academia is failing students and their novel ideas
Instead of encouraging these students to think outside the box and consider novel ideas – especially those backed by facts – students are unconsciously primed for intellectual rigidity driven by ideology. This narrow intellectual imposition leads students to reactiveness and unproductive engagement. Education should never be politicized, but politics should always be a source of engagement.
Many Western scholars, policymakers, and university students have failed to think beyond the two-state solution. The two-state solution has become religiously preached and received. Falsely framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as merely a territorial dispute has become dogmatic.
This theoretical failure reflects the criticism that academia has thrown at unconventional plans like Trump’s – that they lack realism – while ignoring the real challenges posed by Hamas’s jihadist ideology and dismissing the need for fresh, out-of-the-box ideas.
Propositions by various scholars surely exist, yet they are rarely brought into university discussions in the Middle East studies arena. What we typically hear is that Israeli occupation and apartheid are why the two-state solution has failed.
The heinous crimes of October 7 should have taught the academy the lesson it was waiting for: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not simply a territorial dispute but an ideological one, and we need to consider alternatives to guarantee Israeli security and improve life for Palestinians, along with regional stability in the long run. Now, as two-state doubt spreads, alternative proposals should force the academy to reckon with this reality.
This is not to say that Trump’s plan is grounded in absolute reality, nor am I claiming it is viable. The details of any plan must be thoroughly examined – that is the very purpose of the academy.
If anti-Zionism – the eradication of the Jewish state – can be taught freely, then plans like Trump’s Mar-a-Gaza, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi’s Sinai and Jordanian plans outlined in his book No Retreat, or Bar-Ilan University Professor Mordechai Kedar’s “Palestinian Emirates” solution should be equally explored.
Known as “the man with the plan,” GW Professor Joseph Pelzman, who is the visionary behind Mar-a-Gaza, should encourage other faculty to teach, discuss, and debate it openly with their students. Students like the GW peer described above should continue asserting themselves with provocative questions and courageously put forth their ideas no matter how unconventional.
The shock of the Mar-a-Gaza plan and the reactions it prompts in academia will likely have two outcomes: it will be used to further demonize Trump, the Republican Party, and Israel, or it could set a precedent for thinking outside the box – not only in the Middle Eastern domain but across other academic disciplines.
Striving for the latter can enhance intellectual rigor and foster improved, innovative ideas in future policy-making arenas.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-841702
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Ethnic Cleansing Of Gaza And American Genetics
February 11, 2025
By Osama Abu Irshaid
When Donald Trump spoke about “controlling” the Gaza Strip, “owning”, making it American, displacing more than two million of its people, and working to turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, under the pretext of the massive destruction it has suffered and the impossibility of living there, he was not just speaking as a real estate developer, nor even as a man suspected of having ties to the mafia, but as an imperialist and a blatant racist, embodying the hateful American history that the US is trying to deny or cleanse itself of.
It is known that Trump and his father, Fred, were involved in lawsuits filed by black Americans and state and federal agencies in the 1960s and 1970s, based on accusations of racism for their refusal to rent apartments in New York State to black citizens.
In the 1980s, the American media was full of investigative reports about the services provided by organised American mafia gangs to Trump’s real estate empire, which included skyscrapers in New York, casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. These investigations resurfaced in 2015 and 2016. Trump is clearly incapable or rejects the idea of distinguishing between being a President and being a businessman and real estate developer, as everything for him is related to profit and accumulating his wealth. The fact that he and his wife launched two digital currencies after winning the presidential elections in November 2023 confirms this.
However, reducing all of America’s misfortunes to Trump is a flawed approach, as he is also the descendant and heir of a long history of genocide, racism and imperialism. Although America is torn between two views, one trying to cleanse itself of that history and acknowledge it, and the other trying to downplay or deny its occurrence, Trump embodies one of the ugliest examples of denial of that dark side of American history while, at the same time, reinforcing and practicing. Perhaps his repeated talk of his desire to annex Canada to the US, and to acquire Greenland, which is under Danish sovereignty, as well as the Panama Canal, in addition to his demand for rights to Ukraine’s natural resources, under the pretext of paying its military debts to his country, all confirm this.
With the arrival of the first white colonialists to what later became known as America, more than 400 years ago (1607), a bitter history of genocide against the indigenous population began, whether through direct killing and cultural genocide, the transmission of diseases to them, to which they were not immune, such as smallpox, or the seizure of their lands and their displacement from them. They also enslaved black individuals who were kidnapped from Africa and brought to America and discriminated against non-Protestant Christian sects, such as Catholics.
Even after the US gained independence 250 years ago (in 1776), many forms of genocide, enslavement and discrimination continued for more than a century and a half, with many forms of discrimination continuing in different forms and patterns. The same can be said about American imperialism, which began in 1840. It claimed to have ended at the beginning of the twentieth century, although the truth says otherwise, as it is still based on “social Darwinism” and claims of “American exceptionalism”.
The US expanded at the expense of Mexico, then some Latin islands and countries, such as Puerto Rico and Cuba, as well as in the Pacific Ocean, in islands such as Hawaii, Guam and Samoa. It had previously occupied lands in Asia, such as Vietnam and the Philippines, in Europe, such as Germany, and in the Middle East, such as Iraq and Syria. In other words, its present is also its past.
Back to Trump’s remarks about the Gaza Strip, last Tuesday (4 February, 2025), during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. These remarks should not be considered in isolation from the dark side of American history. Although some American media outlets are trying to describe Trump’s idea as madness, the fact that they are ignoring is that madness and criminality are an inherent characteristic of American imperialist foreign policy.
American critics of Trump’s statements about emptying Gaza of its inhabitants and developing it into real estate to be enjoyed by the world’s wealthy overlook the fact that the destruction of the Gaza Strip and the Israeli genocidal war against its people was enabled and fully supported by the administration of former President Joe Biden. Trump is only completing the mission, and both (Trump and Biden) are descendants and heirs of the same racist imperialist genocidal heritage.
Between 1830 and 1850, the US government displaced more than 60,000 Native Americans from the southern states and relocated them to “reservations” prepared for them in the state of Oklahoma, during which they, including women, children, the elderly, and the sick, walked 5,043 miles (8,116 kilometres) on foot. This human tragedy is known as the “Trail of Tears” in Native American history, as many of them died from cold, disease, hunger and exhaustion. That crime, just one of hundreds of others, was committed against the indigenous population over a period of 20 years, starting under the administration of Democrat Andrew Jackson and ending with Zachary Taylor of the Whig Party.
Hence, Trump’s talk of ethnic cleansing in Gaza is completely consistent with the history that is rooted in American genetics. Ironically, since moving to the White House less than three weeks ago, Trump has declared war on American schools and universities that dare to teach that dark history. Although Biden claimed to acknowledge this history, and the suffering of the indigenous and black populations during those dark American eras, he engineered an additional dark era in American history in the Gaza Strip. He proved that the only difference between him and Trump is that the latter calls things by their names, while Biden pretended to be civilised as blood dripped from his hands.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250211-ethnic-cleansing-of-gaza-and-american-genetics/
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Israel’s Attack On Literature Should Not Be Normalised
February 11, 2025
Palestinian-related literature in colonised Palestine is in the crosshairs of Israel’s ongoing annihilation, as the recent raid on the Educational Bookshop in Occupied East Jerusalem portrayed. The attack should prompt the West into some profound introspection.
The bookshop has been described as high profile and a stop for many visitors, including diplomats. By raiding the bookshop and arresting its owners, Israel is sending a message to Palestinians – either they stay hidden or face being vanquished. To the rest of the world, what does the raid mean? That even their reading, in colonised Palestine, can be subject to Israel’s colonial violence.
Israeli media reported that the police conducting the raid had to use Google Translate to check the content, and took what they did not like. Officers, it was reported, “uncovered several books with inciting material that contain nationalistic Palestinian themes.”
A look at several photos depicting the bookshop’s interior shows many books published by international publishers. Israel spares nothing – something which its backers in the West should heed for future reference. The action targeted the bookshop and its owners, but books are a collaborative effort. Which means, by default, that the violation extends to a far wider circle – one that encompasses any sliver of support for, or collaboration with, Palestinians’ politics, history, memory and narratives.
Palestinian literature, and literature about Palestine, stands in sharp contrast to the politics of oblivion. It is through literature that much of Palestine is disseminated globally, through books that the world has the opportunity to understand the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle and Palestinian lives. Beyond the abbreviated versions that mainstream media sanitises and disseminates, careful not to antagonise Israel, Palestinian humanity is found within literature.
We connect through reading, build an understanding, make the necessary links between history and the present. We see Palestine from various perspectives, ranging from historic nostalgia to the colonised present, what led to it and how the people are affected. How the world conspired to create the last colonial stronghold with absolute impunity. Through books, Palestinians can articulate within books what the West has deprived them of and, therefore, the space that books provide must be protected.
Ironically, Israel has given more than enough reason as to why Palestinian-related literature should be protected. The Israeli genocide in Gaza is one recent example – the Edward Said Public Library was one of the safe spaces targeted and destroyed, as were universities, schools and cultural centres.
What Israel did in Occupied East Jerusalem was an act that the international community can pass off as one of its routine raids – none of which should have been normalised. But the intent behind it is clear – Israel wages war on anything that does not support its colonial narrative and its biggest opponent will remain the colonised Palestinian people.
The West, however, would do well to keep in mind that every Israeli action will ultimately have wider repercussions. Israel’s attack on the Educational Bookshop and the confiscation of some books is an attack on Palestinian expression and also an attack on anyone wishing to access such literature from the bookshop. In the grand scheme of political complicity, a bookshop is the least of world leaders’ concerns. For the people, who far outnumber any government, a bookshop holds significance. For Israel to succeed at erasing Palestinians, literature is a primary target. For the rest of the world, it should serve as a warning. Publishers across the world have published Palestinian literature. How far can Israel dictate its security narrative? The more Palestine is marginalised, the more Palestine is the link to everything.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250211-israels-attack-on-literature-should-not-be-normalised/
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Will Trump Let Hell Break Out In Gaza?
February 11, 2025
By Adnan Hmidan
Since his return to the White House, Donald Trump has adopted a strategy of “shock and awe”— not just in foreign policy but in the smallest details of daily life. A flurry of decisions, provocative statements and threats stretching from Gaza to Canada, Panama and Greenland, alongside a return to populist symbols like plastic cups, suggest that he is determined to reshape the world according to a logic that suits him. However, what has sparked the most controversy is his explicit threat to “let hell break out” on Gaza, a move that could reignite the war on the enclave in its most brutal form and push the region into an abyss of uncertainty and bloodshed.
Trump seems well aware that creating a state of deliberate chaos is a fundamental part of his dominance over the political scene. He understands that unleashing a barrage of shocking decisions and escalating threats makes it difficult for his political opponents and the international media to respond effectively to all of them at once, granting him the opportunity to execute his agenda with minimal resistance. While grappling with a legacy tainted by trials and accusations that have shaken his image over the years, he is now striving with all his might to reintroduce himself as a leader who never backs down, even if the price is a military escalation that could ignite new global crises.
But this is not just about showcasing strength. For Trump, satisfying his hardline electoral base remains a top priority. This base thrives on rhetoric of power and dominance, feeding off slogans like “America First”, which have become even more aggressive than during his first term. As much as he seeks to present himself as the president who is “making America great again”, he simultaneously employs these political and military adventures as a tool to divert attention from deepening economic and social crises within the United States — a tactic leaders have historically resorted to when facing mounting domestic pressure.
What does this mean for Gaza?
Trump’s threat to open the gates of hell is not just empty populist rhetoric; it carries serious implications. When the U. president explicitly supports the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, he effectively gives Israeli leaders a green light to continue waging an unrestrained war, free from international pressure or political calculations. Even if this support does not translate into direct military intervention, it is enough to embolden Netanyahu and his government to persist in their campaign of bombing, destruction and outright rejection of any diplomatic solutions – making discussions of a truce or ceasefire nearly impossible.
While regional and international mediators, from Egypt to Qatar and the United Nations, work tirelessly to find a way out of this crisis, Trump’s statements serve to undermine these diplomatic efforts. How can any party be expected to engage in negotiations under the threat of annihilation and forced displacement? History has taught us that such threats do not lead to Palestinian surrender; rather, they reinforce their commitment to resistance — especially since what is happening is no longer just a “military operation” but a clear and deliberate attempt to uproot them from their land.
The outrage provoked by these policies will not be confined to Palestine alone. It could spill over into the broader Arab and Islamic world, where anger and frustration grow with each passing day as the tragedy in Gaza unfolds. If public protests escalate, Arab regimes may find themselves facing internal challenges that make it increasingly difficult to maintain their normalisation efforts or even remain silent in the face of renewed massacres. Additionally, these policies could deepen divisions within the Western bloc, as countries like France and Germany struggle to balance their traditional loyalty to Washington with mounting public pressure in support of Palestinians.
A defining moment for the world
All indications suggest that Trump’s latest remarks could be the final nail in the coffin of any de-escalation efforts. Instead, they may trigger an unprecedented escalation that thrusts Gaza back into the heart of the storm. But this raises a crucial question: Is the real problem Trump himself, or is it a world that allows him to act with impunity?
History has been a witness to this trial, where nations had to make a defining choice; either surrender to the logic of brute force or rise in defence of their principles. Today, Gaza is not just a battlefield; it is a moral and humanitarian test for the entire world. Will nations and peoples remain passive spectators to a recurring atrocity, or will there be those brave enough to stand against these aggressive policies?
History is not neutral, and it does not forgive hesitation. The world must choose; either to be complicit in a crime unfolding in broad daylight or to prove that justice and dignity are not just empty words. This test extends beyond Gaza; it challenges everyone who believes in justice and refuses to let the world be ruled by the law of the jungle.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250211-will-trump-let-hell-break-out-in-gaza/
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Netanyahu’s Arrogance Pushing Region To The Precipice
Osama Al-Sharif
February 11, 2025
Saudi Arabia has hit back at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrogant suggestion that the Kingdom should host a Palestinian state, while rejecting the premise that Palestinians must be displaced from their native land. The Kingdom’s Foreign Ministry said that it rejected “such statements that aim to divert attention from the continuous crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian brothers in Gaza, including the ethnic cleansing they are subjected to.”
Netanyahu’s tongue-in-cheek statement was not only reckless and in poor taste, but it also backfired, as Arab capitals rallied to condemn his position and defend the Saudi position. At the same time, world leaders expressed revulsion at the notion of uprooting the Palestinians and taking over their ancestral lands.
Netanyahu’s haughty attitude was boosted by US President Donald Trump’s shocking announcement last week, at a White House press conference with the Israeli premier, that the US would “take over” and “own” Gaza while displacing its residents so that it can turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Netanyahu and his extremist coalition partners were quick to praise Trump’s plan, even as US officials scurried to tone down his statement by claiming that it was based on humanitarian grounds. Others said that Gazans would eventually be allowed to return. But Trump’s confusing and shocking Gaza plan presented a beleaguered Netanyahu with an opportunity to wriggle out of commitments to the ceasefire deal reached last month with Hamas.
Saudi Arabia was quick to reiterate its long-standing position on the two-state solution, rejecting the displacement of Palestinians and the illegal building of settlements as soon as Trump made his outrageous claim on Gaza.
And when Netanyahu suggested that Saudi Arabia should host a Palestinian state, Riyadh was equally resolute in denouncing the Israeli premier. “The Kingdom also points out that this extremist, occupying mentality does not understand what the Palestinian land means to the brotherly people of Palestine and their emotional, historical and legal connection to this land, and it does not think that the Palestinian people deserve to live in the first place, as it has destroyed the Gaza Strip, killed and injured more than 160,000, most of them children and women, without the slightest human feeling or moral responsibility,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
Even in Israel itself, Netanyahu has been attacked for provoking America’s closest Arab ally, one that Trump hopes to bring into the Abraham Accords while inviting Riyadh to invest billions in the US. By trying to be clever, Netanyahu has sealed the fate of any rapprochement with Saudi Arabia — at least for as long as he is in power.
But despite his diplomatic flop, the Israeli premier is looking for ways to use Trump’s surprise position on Gaza to derail the second phase of the ceasefire deal with Hamas and restart military operations. Despite the skepticism and rejection from Republican and Democratic lawmakers of the entire Trump proposal, the US president doubled down on his position when he said that Palestinians would have no right of return to Gaza under his US takeover plan, describing his proposal in excerpts of an interview released Monday as a “real estate development for the future.”
Trump told Fox News that “I would own it” and that there could be as many as six different sites for Palestinians to live outside Gaza under the plan. He was not asked if the Palestinians would have the right to decide their future as the rightful owners of the land.
His words gave Netanyahu a fresh push to seek to topple the ceasefire deal, declaring before the Israeli Knesset on Monday that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority would rule Gaza. He has described Trump’s plan as “revolutionary and creative” and reiterated that Israel is ready to finish the war.
Trump’s unrealistic, not to mention illegal, proposal to “buy Gaza” has emboldened Netanyahu, who saw in the ceasefire a threat to his coalition and his political career. On Sunday, the coalition government rejected a proposal by Israel’s attorney general to set up a probe to investigate the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, with Netanyahu insisting that the war was not over yet.
He seems to be getting his way, as things have begun deteriorating quickly on the state of the truce. On Monday, Hamas issued a statement saying that Israel had been violating the ceasefire deal and that, in response, the movement had decided to indefinitely postpone the further release of Israeli captives.
Netanyahu called for an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss responding to the Hamas statement. Families of Israeli captives blamed Netanyahu's “irresponsible attitude” for the Hamas decision.
Trump’s irrational Gaza statements, as well as Netanyahu’s arrogance, could now lead to the collapse of the ceasefire and the return to a horrific bombardment of Gaza. Netanyahu’s faux pas on Saudi Arabia and his support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians will complicate Trump’s bid to revive the Abraham Accords. They should instead create much-needed momentum for a united global front to oppose Israel’s annexation of Palestinian lands.
Meanwhile, there has been a muted reaction to Israel’s month-long campaign to destroy Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank. According to the UN, at least 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced from Jenin and other refugee camps in the West Bank. Dozens have been killed, the latest being two women, one of them a pregnant 23-year-old. Israel has also demolished tens of homes and destroyed vital infrastructure in at least two camps.
The campaign against Palestinian refugee camps — there are 19 of them in the West Bank that are home to about 300,000 Palestinians — is now part of the far-right government’s plan to change the demographic makeup of the occupied territory in preparation for a possible annexation move, likely blessed by Trump.
This, along with the financial strangulation of the PA, is aimed at encouraging what ultrareligious Jewish leader Itamar Ben-Gvir has called the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians. Trump is yet to divulge what he thinks Israel should do in the West Bank.
These are dangerous times not only for the Palestinians but for the entire region. Israeli extremists are now in control of Israel, which has gone rogue with fiery declarations about territorial ambitions in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and beyond.
An Arab summit in Cairo this month will discuss the dangerous spiral of events in the region that have been encouraged by Trump and led by Netanyahu and his fellow zealots. The message should be a resounding one, echoing around the world and heard particularly in Washington and Tel Aviv.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2589793
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