Trump Is Reframing Palestine as an Immigration Issue. As with Biden's "Ceasefire" Farce, the Goal Is to Continue Genocide.

Presidents are tools to manage the public mind. Analysts and activists have to be more aware of the manipulations by the system and combat their false narratives more effectively.

One of the best things to watch to keep up with Israel’s genocide is the Electronic Intifada livestream. And one of the best analysts on Gaza is Helena Cobban, whom I’ve happily promoted.

She was recently on the show. All seemed to agree that Trump was being “incoherent” in his Gaza policy.

I think this misses the point.

The point is that all US presidents seem “incoherent” because their stated goals are not their actual goals. So they seem confused when they are actually being diabolical and deceitful.

As is often the case, the key to understanding what’s actually going on is to parse through the interesting timing of actions.

Trump seems to have backed a “ceasefire” as he came into office and now is backing Israel’s escalation for a simple reason: The primary purpose of these political operatives of Empire is to control the public mind.

What they did was to wind down the Gaza genocide in the public mind with the inauguration of Trump: Turn the page.

(This was actually done in stages by the system. There was a concerted effort to rebrand Genocide Joe as Geriatric Joe. And then they prevented a Democratic primary process to ensure there wouldn’t be an outbreak of democracy about the genocide as part of the 2024 “election”.)

Now, Trump has green-lighted imperial Israel ramping up its genocide and starvation tactics, etc. by using ICE to go after Palestine activists.

That is, the use of ICE has several effects. One obvious one is to intimidate people into silence, and I’m not suggesting that shouldn’t be countered.

But a more subtle one is to deceive Trump’s electoral base who believe in “America First” that somehow Palestine is an immigration issue and these crazed Palestine activists lied on their visa applications to get into the US and are now tearing down the US.

This helps Trump and Israel in rebranding the issue. It’s not about genocide, it’s about immigration.

It’s all a big lie. Rubio, Trump and company are obviously attacking the First Amendment in service of Israeli genocide, but their strategy is politically effective: Cast Palestine as another immigration issue, so they can pretend to be America First and not — as even some rightwinger critics are charging — Israel First.

(The focus on Mahmoud Khalil has been extensive in terms of mainstream media coverage. Notably, it makes no mention of Israel at all, it’s just about legal process. This is boring to the public. I should note the interesting piece by Craig Murray: “The Curious Case of Mahmoud Khalil”.)

Biden’s “ceasefire” narrative was a similar manipulation — also under-appreciated by intelligent people — which helped sabotage international law and kept Israel’s genocide going for over half a year….

Jeremy Scahill writes in the otherwise insightful piece “How Israel Ceased Negotiations and Resumed Firing on Gaza” that:

The agreement signed January 17 was effectively same deal on the table going back to May 2024 when then-President Joe Biden announced it as a breakthrough. In early June, the UN Security Council endorsed the deal…

What’s critical to understand is that Biden announced that in late May 2024, clearly because the International Court of Justice had just issued orders for Israel to stop its attack on Rafah. The Biden announcement’s main purpose was to prevent a vote at the UN on the ICJ orders. The Algerian government was proposing a resolution to implement the ICJ orders. The US attacked the resolution. Biden made his phony announcement and got the UNSC — including the Algerians!! — to vote for their farce of a resolution, instead of the one the Algerians were reportedly proposing. The farcical US government resolution made no mention of the ICJ orders and instead blessed the “negotiation” process that would obviously be manipulated by the US on behalf of imperial Israel.

All this could have been combated if activists were alert and organized and pressed the Algerians into forcing a vote on their resolution.

The thoughtful Mouin Rabbani, like Scahill, overlooks the motive of undermining the ICJ orders in a recent thread posting on X.

Thus, looking at this trajectory we see how the US government:

• Hinders international law with phony talk of “ceasefire” that many unfortunately get sucked into;

• Pretends to the general public that the crisis in Gaza is over with a shortlived and phony “ceasefire”;

• Allows the resumption of the genocide under conditions in which tons of Democratic party operatives are focusing on other nefarious Trump actions (some real, some exaggerated).

The net result is a dwindling of the fight against the genocide just as it is ramping up.

This movement is circling the drain — unless people pay attention and act more strategically.

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