Rogue Imperial Dominance Disguised as Diplomacy: Trump’s UN Speech on Gaza

Trump's UN speech was more of a power play than a speech. Under the guise of peace, it was actually a reversal of reality, a magical trick designed to make the victim into the aggressor and the aggressor into the victim. He mentioned ceasefires, but he conveniently ignored the lengthy and horrific history of violent truce violations and unrelenting sieges and genocide carried out by the Israeli government, which was armed and protected by Washington, rather than Hamas. He wasn't recounting history when he said that Hamas had "rejected reasonable offers of peace," but rather rewriting it for a crowd that was too intimidated or numbed to challenge the falsehood. In this context, peace has always meant surrender, in Trump's mind's eye.

In a brilliant example of Orwellian inversion, he denounced countries that recognize a Palestinian state as a "reward for terrorists." The bare minimum of justice; the recognition that a stateless, dispossessed indigenous Palestinian people have a right to sovereignty, dignity, and survival is what he referred to as a reward. It is not only cynical to portray this as a concession to terrorists, but it is the fundamental tactic used by those in positions of power to portray opposition to oppression as barbaric and the apparatus of occupation as democracy and order. In fact, Trump unveiled his true plan, unconditional support of ethnic cleansing, genocide and land grab of Gaza for Israel.

The President's entire definition of peace was summed up in the phrase, "Release the hostages now." As if over 90,000 Palestinian deaths were not documented. Here, the brutality of American empire is condensed, Israeli families' suffering is glorified as sacred, and Palestinian families' suffering a genocide is minimized, thrown away, and unworthy of recognition. A rogue empire rule of law operates in this way. It asserts the moral superiority after dehumanizing the vanquished and humanizing its own.

Ultimately, the demand for "an immediate end to war" was merely a theatrical act. It was not an appeal to break up the occupation, lift the blockade, or stop the genocide, or end the Israeli apartheid apparatus. Under the pretence of humanitarian concern, it was an appeal to regain power and restore the conditions of subjugation. Trump was not an anomaly in this regard; rather, he was a faithful follower of the American imperial history of the Middle East, maintaining the spectacle, diverting attention away from the fundamental crime, and making sure that the oppressed people remained shackled, silenced, and obliterated.

He did not, in fact, offer peace. It was dominance disguised as diplomacy, power posing as peace. The victims of this deception are, as usual, the people who are voiceless, the children of Gaza, the families in the debris, and the dispossessed who are repeatedly told that their suffering is an afterthought, their homeland is a mirage, and their lives are merely bargaining chips. Purely, the President of the United States of America unconditionally supports the crimes against humanity and the ultimate human crime of genocide against the indigenous Palestinian Christian and Muslim peoples. Trump and the American government have solidified their present history for many generations to come.