NOT ONLY IS THIS IGNORING HISTORY & THE UN VOTES THAT THE US HAS HISTORICALLY VETOED, IT IGNORES CORRUPT NETANYAHU'S TRIALS FOR WHICH HE IGNORED WARNINGS OF THE HAMAS ATTACK - FAILING TO PROTECT ISRAEL. 

THE US MAY PRETEND ITS POSITION, BUT MEMORIES ARE LONG! 

THE ACTIONS OF THE US DEFENDING GENOCIDE WILL HAUNT THE US IN THE FUTURE! 

HISTORY WILL NOT BE KIND TO THOSE WHO LIED TO PRESIDENT BIDEN, NOR TO TRUMP'S WARPED INTERCESSION THAT CREATED THIS DISASTER!

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called President-elect Donald Trump "the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House."

 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The Cease-Fire Won’t Put an End to Palestinian Oppression

Early signs already indicate that the second Trump administration will, at the very least, further enable illegal Israeli expansion, especially upon the occupied West Bank.

Until recently, the American-funded Israeli genocide of Palestinians unsurprisingly continued without a stop in sight. On January 13, 2025, Israeli attacks assassinated at least 45 Gazans. Shortly after these attacks, however, a cease-fire and hostage deal (reportedly split into three phases) was confirmed on January 15, 2025. Importantly, Steven Witkoff, selected by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to be his special envoy in the Middle East, has forced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a cease-fire and hostage plan in two months, existing in stark contrast with the Biden administration’s incompetent (and frankly cruel) inability to pressure Netanyahu into accepting a plan over the past year.

Nevertheless, even though the incoming Trump administration secured a cease-fire and hostage deal, it’s impossible to truly know what will come next. Trump is notoriously unpredictable. According to recent estimates from Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 45,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered since October 7, 2023. In the days leading up to his presidential inauguration, many around the United States and the world at large are uncertain about how Trump will treat Israel’s ongoing genocide and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. To help answer these questions, I interviewed a variety of scholars.

First, it’s important to assess Trump’s impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his first term. On the one hand, Trump perpetually enabled Israeli expansionism. “Trump recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of Jerusalem, [and] he recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights,” political scientist Norman Finkelstein told me. Further, the two-state proposal that Trump disclosed in 2020 radically reversed the policy of his predecessors by allowing Israel to annex the Jordan Valley and the vast majority of illegal settlements in the West Bank, while merely allotting 15% of historic Palestine toward a Palestinian state. Trump’s first administration simply didn’t value Palestinian sovereignty, a sentiment shared by the Biden administration. “Biden could have reversed [Trump’s] decisions, but elected not to,” Finkelstein further explained to me. The Biden administration’s encouragement of Israel’s genocide are simply an outgrowth of Trump’s previous policies, which approved of Israeli expansionism.

Although criticizing Liz Cheney and other members of Washington’s war machine, Trump remains perpetually ignorant of his own hawkish behavior.

On the other hand, Trump partly abandoned the Palestinian issue during his first term. “Trump (or more precisely, Kushner and others) tried to sideline the Palestinian issue completely and to focus on promoting normalization between Israel, the Gulf States, and Saudi Arabia instead,” international relations scholar Stephen Walt told me. After feeling deserted by the Trump administration, many Palestinians, according to Walt, came to believe that they “had no options other than violence.” Since the Biden administration continued Trump’s policies of abandonment, “October 7 was the result.”

While Finkelstein and Walt highlight the negative consequences of Trump’s policies toward Israel, famed Israeli revisionist historian Benny Morris views Trump’s previous actions differently. “[Trump] recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which previous U.S. presidents should have done, but apart from giving Israelis a good feeling, it had no impact on the conflict,” Morris told me. Nevertheless, by arguing that Trump was right to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and that previous American presidents “should have,” Morris explicitly acknowledges and approves of the Israeli expansionism that Trump fomented, undermining Morris’ credibility to speak on behalf of whether or not the Palestinians perceived Trump’s actions to be escalatory.

Early signs already indicate that the second Trump administration will, at the very least, further enable illegal Israeli expansion, especially upon the occupied West Bank. Two of Trump’s key appointees, Pete Hegseth (Defense Department) and Mike Huckabee (ambassador to Israel), dismiss a two-state solution. Further, Huckabee habitually denies Palestinian existence itself, identifies the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” and believes that the entirety of the West Bank belongs to Israel. David Friedman, who remains a close associate with Trump and was U.S. ambassador to Israel under his first administration, recently wrote a book arguing for a single Jewish state, which would include the West Bank and likely Gaza. Understanding that a second Trump presidency enables further Israeli expansionism, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that “now is the time” to seek sovereignty over the settlements in the West Bank.

It’s entirely likely that the second Trump administration will encourage Israeli expansion over the West Bank to a degree that would guarantee the prevention of an independent Palestinian state from emerging. Former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative Sari Nusseibeh, previously one of the most visible Palestinian peace activists advocating for a two-state solution, maintains, “Under Trump, Israel’s policy will be the geographic and political dismemberment of the embryonic Palestinian state, bringing all this under a hegemonic Israeli authority, with total disregard to international opinion.”

Although a cease-fire and hostage deal has been achieved, Trump promised Netanyahu that his administration would maintain support for Israel even if it violated the agreement, according to a recent report. While a cease-fire was previously reached between Israel and Lebanon, Israel has continued air striking southern and eastern Lebanon. Neither the Trump nor Biden administration has punished Israel, and it’s unlikely that they will. Recently, Hegseth expressed his support for Israel to kill “every last member of Hamas.” In practicality, this entails that high-ranking members of the Trump administration approve of Israel intensifying its indiscriminate assault on Gaza. In addition to the possibility of “the elimination of Gaza as a Palestinian entity and the continuing [encroachment] on the West Bank and its absorption into the state of Israel,” it’s very likely that there will be “more killing and ethnic cleansing” under the second Trump administration, cultural studies scholar Iain Chambers told me. Such wariness regarding the possible perpetuation of genocide and Israeli expansionism under a second Trump administration is also shared by Walt: “The genocide/ethnic cleansing will continue, and I think it is likely that Israel will annex the West Bank (and perhaps portions of Syria and Lebanon).”

Although the future is never entirely given, it’s possible to gauge how the second Trump administration will treat Israel. Based on Trump’s disastrous actions toward Palestinians (during his first term and now), it’s plausible to assume that the second Trump administration will sharply enable Israeli expansionism at the very least, although the simultaneous escalation of Israel’s genocide is also a likely option. Although criticizing Liz Cheney and other members of Washington’s war machine, Trump remains perpetually ignorant of his own hawkish behavior. While hopelessness may ensue upon the realization that the second Trump administration will have disastrous consequences for Palestinian livelihood, one must resist feeling discouraged. Perpetual, collective political action still remains the only viable form of resistance to Washington’s endless support of oppression.

COMMON DREAMS

The Huckabee Family and the killing of a dog and a coverup

The Huckabee family has a long history of dishonesty ie lies, coverups and amoral behavior. Sarah is no exception, as she grew up at “daddy’s” knee.

This is account of the despicable behavior of her brother David Huckabee.

This from Snopes:

On 11 July 1998, two young men working as counselors at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, Arkansas, killed a dog at that Boy Scout camp. One of those young men was 19-year-old Clayton Frady of Texarkana and the other David Huckabee, the youngest son of Arkansas Governor Michael Dale "Mike" Huckabee. David Huckabee was 17 at the time of the slaying, although he would turn 18 less than two weeks later. Both young men were fired over the incident.

And that is where the undisputed facts of the story leave off. All the rest of the details, including why the dog was killed, how the dog was killed, and whether Governor Huckabee attempted (successfully or otherwise) to forestall investigations into his son's act, is up for grabs and may never be knowable. (Thus we can only verify the basic fact that David Huckabee killed a dog at a Boy Scout camp, not the ancillary issues of whether he truly did so "brutally" or "for fun.")

While the dog itself was consistently described as a stray that had wandered onto the property, the only additional description of it came from Marcal Young, scout executive of the Caddo Area Council that operated the camp where the animal was killed, who said the canine was "probably a mixed breed."

As to why the dog was killed, different people have offered different reasons. Governor Huckabee said in 2007 interview conducted by Larry King that "It was mangy. It looked like it was going to attack." The father of the other young man fired over the dog's slaying said in a 1998 news article his son had come upon one or more Scouts who had the dog "hung over a limb and choking," so his son helped "put it out of its misery." Scout executive Young said in another 1998 news article the two young men had told him the dog appeared to be ill.

No one connected to any of the principals apparently wanted to talk about how the dog was dispatched. The only person in that group who said anything about this was Danny Frady, father of Clayton Frady (the other young counselor fired over the incident), and even he didn't describe just what his son did beyond averring that when his son came upon the animal, it was being hanged by others. Anonymous rumors about how the dog was killed hold that Frady and Huckabee hanged the dog, slit its throat, and stoned it to death.

One lingering question about the incident is why young Frady and Huckabee would have been fired from their jobs as camp counselors if they had merely put a suffering animal out of its misery or struck down a sickly animal that looked like it was about to attack someone? Scout executive Young, the person who dismissed them from their jobs, said the pair were fired because they had violated a Scout law: "A Scout is kind."

A December 2007 Newsweek article reported that shortly after the animal's death, the local prosecuting attorney wrote a letter to the Arkansas state police asking them to investigate the case to see if the two young men involved had violated state animal cruelty laws. The state police did not look into the matter, and no charges were filed.

John Bailey, then director of Arkansas's state police, told Newsweek that personnel in Governor Huckabee's employ (his chief of staff and personal lawyer) leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the local prosecutor's request for an investigation: "Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed chief by Huckabee's Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer's intervention as improper and terminated the conversation." Bailey was fired by Huckabee seven months later, with (according to Bailey) one of the reasons given by Huckabee being that "I couldn't get you to help me with my son when I had that problem." Newsweek quoted I.C. Smith, the former FBI chief in Little Rock, as saying "Without question, [Huckabee] was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son."

Governor Huckabee denied using his influence to keep police out of the matter, saying to CNN host Larry King: "Well, let me categorically say that is absolutely not true. I never used my influence. In fact, if anything, I said treat it like you would anything else. I don't want special treatment for him or against him. My son was a minor at the time. It was not a criminal issue. It was an issue that was dealt with."